What About the Children?
by EvanescingSky
Summary: When London becomes a target of Nazi Germany, Mrs. Kirkland sends her two youngest sons away to the countryside to wait out the war. Life at Robinson House-a refuge for other London boys-falls into a predictable rhythm, until they receive an unexpected addition, right from the war front.
1. Chapter 1

After the first bombs fell on London, there was no persuading Mummy. No amount of pleading or demanding or teary-eyed looks would make her change her mind. No matter how much (questionable) maturity was shown or logical arguments presented or angry drawings made on paper scraps had any effect. Simply nothing could convince Mrs. Kirkland not to send her two youngest sons away to the countryside, in hopes they'd be safer than in the London suburbs.

"Iain and Mairead don't have to go!" Arthur argued for the millionth time as Mummy cleared the table to set it for dinner.

"Iain and your sister are too old to be sent away," Mrs. Kirkland told him for the umpteenth time. "And they're helping with the war effort." That was true—Iain was just a couple years too young to join the army as a solider, but was something like an errand boy. Mairead, the eldest at eighteen, worked in the factories as a rivet girl, sending money to her fiancé in Dublin where he was working until he could buy a house and bring her to Ireland.

"It's not _fair!_" Arthur shouted, stomping his foot. Most often he was a quiet enough child, but he was as hard-headed as a bull and when he felt he was being treated unjustly there was no end he wouldn't go to to prove it.

"Well while you're on the subject of things that aren't fair, take out the trash," Mrs. Kirkland ordered him, sick to death of his constant arguing on this subject. "And then go walk the dog. And stop throwing temper tantrums, you're nearly a teenager. Behave like it." He glared at her, his thick eyebrows knitting together, but eventually stomped off to do as he was told.

"You really shouldn't bother," Daffyd said from where he was weeding the garden when Arthur passed with their Scottish terrier. He'd mowed the lawn with the push mower earlier and the smell of cut grass still hung in the air. "She's not going to change her mind." Daffyd was twelve, two years older than Arthur, and either very keen at listening, or Arthur's shouting had made it through the windows more clearly than he thought.

"Sod off," Arthur muttered, nudging the terrier—Angus—along with his foot.

"Mum'll make you eat soap if she hears you talk like that!" Daffyd called, just loud enough that it might be heard in the kitchen. Arthur through him a look both angry and betrayed and then hurried off to the sound of his name being called in a warning tone from inside.

Warm, late summer heat was stifling in London and he could smell the Thames long before he got close. He liked the city though; he'd lived here his whole life. He knew all the perfect nooks and crannies to go looking for small animals, the best spots to catch frogspawn and watch it hatch into tadpoles, the bookstores with friendly owners who would let him sit inside and read on rainy days. He felt like it was a part of him, not to mention being forced out into the country felt like exile, a public declaration that he and Daffyd were not as mature or adult as their two older siblings and their parents. If there was anything Arthur hated most of all, it was being treated like a child.

When he came home, hands stuffed into his pockets, looking sullenly at the sidewalk, Mairead was home and sitting on the checkered couch with a glass of something alcoholic; he could tell from the smell. He squinted in the direction of the kitchen, clearly displeased.

"Is the protest ongoing then?" she remarked, looking over at him. Her carrot-top hair, usually unruly and cascading down her back, was, with much effort, pinned up in a bun on the back of her head. Arthur thought it looked unnatural; Mairead had never worn her hair up before the war. He eyed her for a moment before replying.

"It is," he said stiffly.

"And how's progress going?" She sipped her beverage, looking subtly amused. Arthur opened his mouth to respond, but he really had nothing to report back. He fumbled for a moment or two and then declared:

"You're making fun of me!"

Mairead chuckled.

"Dear brother, if you want your little temper strike to work, you have to have something to bargain," she explained, drawing one knee up onto the couch and turning to face him more fully. "You have to have something she wants. That's how all strikes work. The bosses want the workers to work, and the workers want more pay or something, so they have a trade. _You're_ just trying to get your way." Arthur looked suspicious for a moment, but that made sense. He slumped.

"But I don't have anything to trade," he said, his brows furrowing as he tried to think.

"Well steal something, then you'll have something," she said, snickering.

"Do NOT be inciting him to more trouble," Mrs. Kirkland called from the table, where she was placing a tray with a great big Shepherd's Pie on it. "He's been quite enough already the past few days."

"I'm just saying, if he's going to have a strike, he ought to do it proper," Mairead said.

"Who's going on strike?" At that moment, Iain walked through the door, removing his cap as he entered. "Not the coal miners again?"

"Arthur's going on strike," Mairead said, nodding to him.

"No one's going on strike!" Mrs. Kirkland exclaimed in exasperation, wiping her hands hard on her apron.

"I should hope not, in these times," grunted Mr. Kirkland as he followed Iain through the door. Following the evacuation at Dunkirk, he'd been sent home, but Mrs. Kirkland could tell he was restless. He often spent most of the day out of the house, not coming home until late, but his wife had asked him to be home for dinner this week, since it was the last Arthur and Daffyd would see of him for a while.

"Looks like the time isn't right for your strike," Mairead informed Arthur. "Better regroup with the union and plan for spring." He worked his mouth for a moment like he was going to say something to her, and then ran upstairs. Angus turned to greet Iain and Mr. Kirkland, who sighed.

"He's still fighting about that?" he asked, going to the kitchen to help himself to his own glass of ale. He raised an eyebrow at Mairead, but her drinking was an argument they'd had before and he never won with her anymore, so he didn't even bother trying. Like Arthur, Mairead was terminally stubborn, but unlike Arthur, she made no effort to follow the rules or convention.

"Oh, I don't blame him," said Mrs. Kirkland in a quieter voice, shaking her head as she continued to set the table. Mairead finished her drink and went to help her mother. "He feels left out."

"For the record, it does feel a bit like we're being banished," Daffyd said, sticking his head through the window in the dining room.

"It's for your own safety," Mrs. Kirkland said seriously. "Hurt feelings are more than worth both of you being alive to be resentful."

"Then what are Iain and I, cannon fodder?" Mairead asked as she laid down some plates.

"That's what older siblings are for, isn't it?" Iain said, grinning wolfishly at them from the kitchen doorway.

"Well, we'll be useful for once in our lives," she remarked thoughtfully.

"Shoo! Everyone out of the kitchen!" Mrs. Kirkland declared, flapping her apron at them. If that didn't work…they all knew how well she could snap a towel against an unfortunate behind. "Mairead, get the glasses, would you?"

They ate dinner and the next day Daffyd and Arthur were sent by train to the English countryside, closer to Scotland than France. Arthur sulked the whole way there and picked at the label that had been put on his coat. It read, in his mother's familiar handwriting, just his name: Arthur J. Kirkland. Across from him, his brother's read "Daffyd W. Kirkland".

"We're labeled like fruit at the market," he grumbled, watching the scenery rush by outside.

"Fruit? You're not a fruit," Daffyd said. "You're a Brussel sprout."

"And you're a git," Arthur replied, making a face before slouching lower in his seat and falling silent. At some other seat, they could hear the sound of a couple other boys arguing. Neither Daffyd nor Arthur felt like going to talk to them though.

When they arrived, they were far from the only children in the station. There was a whole group of them, maybe ten other boys, all crowded up on the platform. Arthur hesitated, but Daffyd nudged him towards the group. The rest of them were labeled too, though some of their labels looked like they'd accidentally been put through the wash.

"Hi there!" one perky little boy said to Arthur, grinning at him. He was missing one front tooth and had a smattering of freckles on his cheeks. His voice seemed to echo off the vaulting ceilings of the train station. "I'm Henry!" He held out his hand and Arthur, out of an obligation of manners, shook it.

"Arthur Kirkland," he replied. Henry turned to Daffyd and repeated the process, thrusting out his hand and enthusiastically introducing himself.

"I'm Daffyd," the older boy responded. "It's a pleasure." Arthur tuned the rest out until he registered the lack of their talking and noticed they were both looking at him.

"What?" he asked, blinking.

"How old are you?" Henry repeated, tugging on his suspenders. It was apparently not the first time he'd asked the question.

"He's ten," Daffyd answered for him. Arthur closed his mouth and nodded to confirm.

"Drat," Henry said with a little frown.

"What's wrong?" Daffyd asked, tilting his head.

"I'm younger than everybody here!" Henry said. "I'm only eight!"

"Boys! Can everyone form a line, please?" called a voice. Arthur stood up on tip-toe to see a thin woman with a straw hat and wire rim glasses directing them. "Nice and orderly now, if you please!" A train whistle blew and a black motor at one of the other platforms began to move off. Arthur got in line in front of Daffyd and they followed the shrew-looking woman out of the station. She loaded the children onto an old bus and then stood at the front of it while the driver started to guide them out of the parking lot.

"My name is Miss Bailey and I will be one of your teachers at Robinson House," she said, speaking loudly and clearly. "Your parents have sent you here to get you away from the war, but that's no reason to let your schooling fall by the wayside. You will still have lessons." There was a collective groan from the assembled boys. "Enough of that now," she said. "Robinson House is owned by the Robinson family and they have graciously opened their doors for refugee children, so it is expected you will treat this house with respect. You are guests here and it is a privilege that Mr. and Mrs. Robinson granted out of their own generosity. The first group of boys is already settled in; when you arrive, you will get a bed and a schedule for classes. Post will be mailed and brought in once a week, if you wish to write letters home. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask."

A hand shot up immediately.

"Yes, you there?" She left a pause for him to fill in his name. The boy got to his feet to pose his question.

"Richard Thompson," he supplied. "Will we have free time?"

"Yes, of course," Ms. Bailey said. "You'll have plenty of time to socialize and amuse yourselves." The boys collectively relaxed. So they weren't being shipped off to some sort of academic military school. Another hand went up.

"Yes?" The small boy rose, keeping his hand in the air.

"Can we—"

"Name, please?" Ms. Bailey prompted him.

"Oh, yes. Ronald Hughes," he said quickly. He had a big gap between his front teeth and spoke with a slight lisp. "May we keep pets, ma'am?" Ms. Bailey frowned.

"Certainly not. This is a children's refuge, not a menagerie." Ronald nodded, sucking his lips in, and sat down. Ms. Bailey, with no more questions took her seat, and when they arrived, Ronald was seen by the side of the bus letting a rather large rat out of his pocket into the dirt.

As the bus trundled up, Arthur took more attentive notice. They'd been bumping along a dirt road for some time now, but the building they pulled up to was no small affair. No wonder they could fit so many children here! It was a fine house, darkly colored and Victorian in style. The grounds appeared massive and a wood began on one side. Daffyd led out a quiet breath.

"Imagine the football we could play out there," he said in a quiet voice to Arthur. Arthur was still trying to be pessimistic, but even he felt a thrill looking around. The only vacations the Kirklands ever went on were to go visit Grandmum in the South and she pinched Arthur's cheeks too hard and her house smelled like old cat. He could play plenty of football out here, or Daffyd's favorite, rugby, or search for fairies in the woods-! Maybe staying here wouldn't be all doom and gloom after all.

Ms. Bailey led them up to the house, past the bushes by the road and through the wrought-iron gates out front. Arthur wasn't sure what the purpose of those were, since the property wasn't fenced in, but they did give it a touch of imposing style. They passed a few other boys already there on their way up the stairs. Ms. Bailey brought them to three make-shift dormitories, featuring ten beds each, five on each side of the room. One was already strewn with personal things, the other held a few sparse belongings.

"Dormitories two and three are available for use," she announced. "Choose an open bed. You will keep your belongings in your trunks or knapsacks under your bed. Coats may go in the closet, one hanger per person. No fighting over beds!"

Arthur tried to make a beeline for a bed by the window, but he was beaten out, so he took the next-closest bed. Daffyd took one by the door. Once Arthur had arranged his meager possessions around the bed and hung up his coat, he was at a bit of a loss. What now?

"Dinner is at six thirty sharp every evening," Ms. Bailey announced when the boys had all settled down. "Breakfast is at seven in the morning and lunch is at twelve. You will have classes from eight until two in the afternoon. The rest of the day is then yours to spend as you wish, provided you do not leave the property. Bedtime is at eight at night and lights out is at nine. After nine, there is to be no one out of bed." Immediately a hand jerked up.

"Yes?" She indicated the boy.

"Dennis Hall," he introduced himself. "What if we have to use the washroom?" There were a couple snickers from the younger boys.

"There's an exception for that," she said. "There's one washroom here on the second floor and two on the bottom floor. If there are no more questions, I will be downstairs planning your English and history lessons for tomorrow." No one else raised a hand, so she departed and left them to amuse themselves. It was only a couple of minutes before a few older boys, around Daffyd's age, appeared in the doorway.

"Anybody wanna play football?" one of them asked with a Cockney accent.

"Yes, I'll play!" one boy exclaimed. Daffyd joined a few others walking over and, satisfied with their new recruits, the boys departed. It wasn't like Arthur _wanted_ to spend time with his brother, but now he really didn't know what to do with himself.

"You wanna go catch frogs?" Henry asked, giving him a perky look. Arthur's flat expression didn't waver in the slightest.

"No, I can't say I do," he replied. He walked out of the dorm, thinking he might as well explore the place he'd be living for God only knew how long.

They had three teachers: Ms. Bailey, who taught history and English, Ms. White, who taught mathematics and led physical exercises, and Ms. Edwards, who taught art. There was also Mr. Martin, an older man, who was the groundskeeper and did odd jobs to keep Robinson House in shape. Every morning at breakfast, Ms. Bailey would read them the updates on the war from the paper, so they all heard a watered-down version of what was happened. Their revulsion at France's surrender pinned the move entirely on "classic French weakness". There was always loud, brash discussion among the boys about how they'd fix everything if they were soldiers. Lots of talk about how they didn't need America's help but how the Americans should still get their lousy arses over here and offer it anyway. And more than a reasonable amount of trash talk about Germany and Italy usually sprinkled in.

Arthur amused himself by slowly devouring the collections of books in the house and exploring the grounds of the house. Once in a while he played football with Daffyd and his new friends, but it was hard to keep up with them and he lost interest in the rowdy boys fairly quickly. His first letter from home came on the second week, addressed to both himself and Daffyd. Somehow, it only made Arthur feel more homesick and when he went to bed that night, thinking about the words Mummy had written on the paper, he had to try very hard not to cry.

Other boys cried. He could hear them sniffling at night. But none of them ever breathed a word about being homesick out loud during the day.

Arthur had more or less settled into life in Robinson House, along with the rest of the boys, when an anomaly struck one morning. As he made his way into the dining room, stocked with two long tables and one at the head for the teachers, he spotted a boy standing by the doors. His hair was golden blond and unusually long and he was looking around the room and watching the boys, his blue eyes full of trepidation. The rest of the boys took their seats as usual.

"I think we should have a big game of hide and seek this afternoon!" Walter Harris was saying as he reached for a biscuit.

"Oh yes, that would be fun!" agreed one of the younger boys.

"Hide and seek is for babies," snorted Benny Clarke.

"Don't be such a spoilsport, Benny," Walter said breezily. "No one asked you to play anyway." There were a few laughs. Ms. Edwards went up to the boy by the door and pointed to one of the tables.

"Go and find yourself a seat," she said. He stared at her and didn't move until she gave him a nudge. Maybe he was stupid, Arthur thought. He wouldn't be the only one here. He went back to his breakfast and didn't worry about it.

He was in math class after breakfast and the teacher introduced him as Francis Bonnefoy, who had come from France. Specifically, the north.

"Don't you mean Germany?" someone whispered and there were giggles. Ms. White pretended not to hear it.

"Why don't you pick a seat?" she said to Francis. He gave her the same blank stare he'd given Ms. Edwards that morning at breakfast. "A seat," she repeated, pointing to an empty desk. "Do you understand?" Francis looked to the desk and back at Ms. White and seemed to get it. He went and sat down.

"Doesn't he speak English?" Billy Evans asked.

"I'm afraid not," Ms. White said.

"Then how is he going to DO anything?" piped up one of the younger boys.

"Leave that for us to worry about," Ms. White, grabbing a piece of chalk and starting to scrawl on the board. "However, you can tell me what five times three is."

Francis spent the class period kicking his feet back and forth and staring out the window. When they got worksheets, he drew pictures on it instead of answering their assigned questions. Arthur scowled and finished up his own work.

Later that day, after class, the boys decided to play hide and seek, a big game of it, inside and out.

"But not into the forest!" Daniel Williams added, much to Arthur's chagrin. "Elsewise we'll be out there all night looking and people are apt to get forgotten." They drew straws and Henry lost, which meant he was stuck counting to a hundred and fifty while the rest of them ran off to hide. Even Francis, who presumably didn't understand a word they were saying, seemed to grasp the point of the game and ran off with everyone else. Or he just wanted to look like he knew what he was doing.

Arthur ran upstairs to the bedrooms, but quickly realized several other boys had already decided to hide under beds. He went to the bathroom, thinking he could stow in the shower or bath, but Anthony King was already in there and hissed at him to get out so he didn't give Anthony away. He tried to weasel under a bench, but then he noticed he'd be seen from a distance as soon as Henry came upstairs. He started to panic, hearing Henry's steady countdown from below and ran to a closet. It had shelves, but he could just barely squeeze himself inside between those and the door. He swore it wasn't ten seconds later the door was wrenched open and light assaulted his eyes.

It was the French boy, who apparently hadn't found a good hiding spot either. He appraised the closet and then tried to fit in with Arthur.

"Hey! This is my spot!" Arthur snapped under his breath, trying to stop him. "Get out, go find your own!"

"Ready or not, here I come!" Henry called cheerfully from downstairs. Francis said something in French to Arthur and pushed a little harder, still trying to fit in the closet.

"No! You have to go find your own spot!" Arthur argued slightly louder. Francis pushed him aside and tried to close the door anyway, but Arthur was still intent on shoving him out. "Get out of my closet!" He gave Francis another push and the boy snapped back in French, clearly annoyed that Arthur wouldn't just let it go. "Don't you use that voice, this is my spot, I found it first!" Arthur exclaimed in righteous outrage. Their squabbling grew louder and more physical until they hit the door just as Henry was opening it and spilled out onto the floor in a tangle of limbs and plain brown shoes.

"Found you!" Henry exclaimed, a bright smile on his plump, freckled face. Arthur momentarily ceased trying to pull Francis' hair and the other boy gave him one last half-hearted shove.

"Now look what you did!" Arthur exclaimed, throwing his hands up.

"I thought the point of the game was to keep quiet, Arthur!" Henry chirped. "Now come on, help me come find everyone else!" Arthur sent a searing glare at Francis and grudgingly got to his feet to follow Henry. Francis sneered and joined them, his arms crossed in irritation. Arthur was still sore about it at dinner, especially when Henry happily told everyone else how he'd found Arthur and Francis so quickly.

"I would've been perfectly well-hidden if that lousy frog hadn't come along and tried to steal my hiding spot!" Arthur objected, waving a fork in Francis' direction. Sensing he was being spoken of in a less than complimentary fashion, Francis curled his lip at Arthur, in an impressively derisive look for one so young. Dennis then brought up possible activities for tomorrow and the topic passed until the bell rang, signaling the end of dinner.

On the subject of the war, there only seemed to be bad news. The situation never improved and even small victories couldn't be celebrated in the wake of such devastation. Germany was establishing a new government in France, and Italy too, took a part of the vanquished country to the south. America still was silent and Eastern Europe seemed to be falling like dominos. There were plenty of nasty things for the boys to say about their supposedly strongest ally, France, who seemed to have deserted them. Whether or not he could understand, Francis could pick out the name of his country from among their angry, impassioned speeches and withdrew more in on himself, picking silently at his dinner. He hardly ate anything, Arthur had noticed. He hadn't been fat when he got here, but now he was nearly as thin as Arthur, even though he was a good several inches taller and broader. Additionally, making friends was difficult when he didn't speak the language, so aside from occasionally making the boys laugh with his exaggerated facial expressions, he was mostly left to himself. That was, until they learned he could play football.

There was a good group of them outside for the usual game, only this time their solitary French member was among those hoping to be chosen for teams. When everyone was divvied up (team captains Benny Clarke and Walter Harris, who were the oldest), Walter groaned because he had both Arthur, who was puny, and Francis, who didn't understand English.

"You." He jabbed a finger at Arthur. "Goalie."

"But—" Arthur wanted to play offense.

"Goalie, Kirkland!" Grumbling, Arthur trumped off and Walter assigned Francis to defense, hoping they could at least keep the ball away from him. He was ordered not to do anything, but let the rest of the team take care of things.

Arthur planted himself in front of their goal line, staring blackly at the field. Since they had no real goals, they had to estimate height and width, but they made do (with a few fist fights here and there). But Arthur hated being goalie; he wanted to be out on the field, doing something! Not sitting here waiting to be the last defense blah blah blah.

A few times, the ball got close to him and Arthur tensed in eager anticipation, but then it would move back away. They finally made a goal on him because he'd been so bored he drifted off into a daydream waiting for something to happen. Flushed with embarrassment, he threw the ball back into the field and did succeed in stopping the next goal, after Walter told him to pay more attention or he'd be on the sidelines next game. As their appointed finish time (one of the boys kept running back inside to check the clock and then dashing back out to tell them the time) approached, they were tied at 3-3. Someone kicked the ball towards Arthur's goal and it was rolling so perfectly, unobstructed, towards Francis, he couldn't help but chase it down.

"I said don't do anything!" Walter howled at him as he sprinted across the field, desperate to get to the ball first. Francis either didn't understand or wasn't listening, because he kept going, drew back, and gave the ball an almighty kick. The boys slowly came to a halt, watching it arc over the field, clearing their heads and soaring lazily past the out stretched fingers of Benny's goalie to bury itself well within the "goal zone". Walter's jaw was practically on the ground. Francis watched them for a reaction and when awed smiles began to show up on his teammates' faces, a smug look settled on his own. Benny was furious of course, because that shouldn't have even been _possible _but there were still ten minutes left in the game and—

They didn't win.

"That's our little Frenchie!" Walter shouted, slapping Francis on the back when the boy on the porch yelled time at the score 4-3. "Good job Frank!" Cheering rose up from Walter's team, except from Arthur, who'd be damned if he'd cheer for Francis even if that had been an amazingly good shot. He was slightly bitter that all he got to do was goalie, and Walter didn't even think he'd done a good job.

"It doesn't count!" Benny yelled, throwing his hat in the grass. "You can't count that!"

"And why not?" asked Walter, looking just pleased as punch, moving to stand beside Francis.

"Because—because—it was the damn frog!" Benny sputtered, grabbing his cap off the ground and flailing it at Francis. "He's not even one of us!"

"Who bloody cares?" Walter laughed, throwing his hands up. "He was on our team and he made the shot! You're just hacked off because you lost!" Benny flung himself at Walter and there was a brief struggle before they pulled apart and Benny gave up the fight, stomping off to nurse his failure.

The rest of the team strolled off, with Francis an apparent new favorite, while Arthur squinted angrily at the back of his head. Stupid Frenchie. Stealing all the glory. Daffyd found Arthur later, holed up in a corner with a book he found in the house.

"You're not still upset about the football game, are you?" he asked.

"I let in three goals," Arthur muttered.

"It's your short arms, you know, you can't reach…" Arthur looked up with an annoyed expression. He knew Daffyd was teasing, but it was so obnoxious. Brothers were obnoxious. And so were sisters. People were obnoxious. But books were alright.

"Get lost," Arthur sulked, slouching against the wall. Daffyd mussed up Arthur's already messy hair and gave him a noogie. "Ow! Get out of here!" He waved his arms about to knock Daffyd's hand away. The boy laughed quietly and meandered off.

"Don't be late for dinner, Arthur!" Arthur went back to his book and barely remember the advice in time to hear the bell announcing the start of dinner. He raced to the hall and slid into his seat in what he hoped was a subtle, unnoticeable fashion. The football game was, of course, the topic of dinner, much to Arthur and Benny's displeasure. Arthur wasn't sure he was more annoyed that his failures were mentioned at all, or that they were almost entirely glossed over in favor of discussing Francis' shot clearing ¾ths of the field. In either case, he stabbed his potatoes like they had personally wronged him.

After the boys found out that Francis could play football, they paid more attention to him even though he was French. But he wasn't left hanging around the sidelines, being chosen last or not at all for games, and they spoke to him, even though all he could really do was smile blithely back. He could draw funny pictures on classwork, that helped, although the teachers tried to tell him he was wasting paper and pencil lead. It all seemed to be looking up greatly for him.

Arthur, in the meantime, stewed. He knew he was fixating too much on it, but he was so damned annoyed. A couple weeks went by though, and he started to put Francis out of his mind. He poured over the Robinsons' books and explored the forest and tried to stop Henry from disturbing him. One day in the woods, he found a dead butterfly, wings still intact, and carefully scooped it up to take back inside. He put it on the window sill of his dormitory and then went into the washroom to clean his hands.

When he entered, a familiar sniffling sound reached his ears, accompanied by quiet, poorly-muffled weeping. Most of the boys only cried at night though; it was unusual (pathetic) to hear someone during the day. It grew softer when the door shut behind him and he wondered who was in here crying. Letting his curiosity get the better of him, after he'd washed his hands, he nudged the door open with a foot and then let it close. A few moments later, he was rewarded by the stall (constructed for the purpose of allowing the shower and sink to be used while someone was at the toilet) unlocking. And who should walk out, but the seldom-fazed French boy.

Only he looked anything but his usual poised, elegant self. His eyes were red and swollen, his face flushed, and he was rubbing his cheeks to dry them. Quiet hiccups escaped his mouth and he was going to the sink to wash his face when he noticed Arthur. He looked both upset and offended that Arthur had tricked him into thinking the room was empty.

"Why were you crying in there?" Arthur asked, pointing to the stall. Francis muttered something under his breath and tried to push past Arthur. "Hey, wait!" It occurred to him only after that that Francis couldn't really answer the question, but it felt out of place to let Francis just run off after Arthur had caught the cheery boy weeping by himself in the washroom over _something_.

"Get out of my way!" Francis snapped suddenly. His accent was so thick it took Arthur a moment, but when he realized he could understand what was said, he gaped.

"Hey! Do you speak English? What were you doing in there?" He continued to foil Francis' attempts to get past him. Francis didn't open his mouth again, but they struggled quietly over the door, Arthur, as usual, set on getting whatever he couldn't have, no matter how insignificant (in this case, answers). At some point, it wasn't even about the door anymore, they were just fighting. Francis' foot slipped and Arthur was leaning so much weight on him they both tumbled to the tiled floor.

"Get off me!" he shouted, a high-pitched note to his voice. "Just leave me alone, why are you English always so nosy?" Ms. Edwards heard the commotion and found them squirming on the floor.

"Boys! Stop this at once!" She pulled Arthur off of Francis and got them both to their feet. "What's the meaning of this?"

"Francis speaks English!" Arthur declared at once, pointing an accusing finger at Francis. That, he thought, would be the perfect way to avoid the fact that he'd started the fight. Francis' jaw dropped open and the look of outraged betrayal that he gave Arthur ran deep. Understandably, Ms. Edwards looked surprised too. She turned her attention to Francis.

"Mr. Bonnefoy, is that true?" she asked. He opened his mouth, looking for an excuse, but eventually gave in.

"Yes," he mumbled, not looking at her.

"Well! I can't believe you would carry on such a deceit. I can only blame your delicate state of mind," she said. "You will be started on proper coursework tomorrow and expected to participate like the rest of your classmates. As for you, Mr. Kirkland," she continued, looking back at Arthur, who had, unfortunately, not been forgotten. "No more fighting. Both of you, in fact." She led them out of the bathroom and they were put on dish duty in the kitchen that night. Francis refused to speak a single word to Arthur.

Daffyd came up to Arthur while he was sitting at the end of the table, poking at his food, and punched him in the shoulder.

"Ow! What was that for?" he demanded, jerking his head around to glare up at his brother, quite heatedly for such a small child.

"Don't be getting into fights," Daffyd warned him. "I'm not going to deal with you if you start acting like Iain and Mairead when they were your age."

"As if you remember that," Arthur muttered under his breath. "And it wasn't _my_ fault, ask the frog!" Daffyd didn't buy that for a second and it showed on his face.

"I mean it Arthur. Wrestling kids in the washroom isn't going to do a whole lot for you," he said.

"I told you, _he_ started it!" Arthur continued to argue. "He wouldn't say what he was doing, skulking around in there all weepy like a little girl!"

"Gee, it wouldn't be because his country's been invaded by the Germans and he's been sent away to a foreign land where he doesn't speak the language knowing his family is still in Occupied France or anything, would it?" Daffyd asked in a mocking tone, pretending to think about it.

"He does too speak English!" was Arthur's contribution. But when he thought about what Daffyd said, he felt guilty about fighting with Francis. The boy always seemed so relaxed and sunny, it was hard to imagine he was truly upset. He averted his eyes and Daffyd knew he'd gotten to his brother.

"Try to think about things a little more before getting into fights," Daffyd said. "Take a lesson from our dear big brother and sister—not every fight is worth having." Arthur sighed. Daffyd ground his knuckles into the top of Arthur's head (to the sound of more protests) and strolled off to find a place to sit.


	2. Chapter 2

Francis gave no explanation the next day for why he could suddenly speak fluent English, but his classmates were certainly surprised. And, as if to spite Arthur for spilling the secret, it only seemed to make Francis more well-liked, particularly by the teachers. Even Ms. Edwards had to come around, now that there was a sweet, high voice to go with the demure head tilts and the batting eyelashes and the charming smiles.

But Arthur could see what the rest seemed oblivious to (or at least, he perceived them to be): the war was wearing on Francis. Now that he knew Great Big Secret #2, that Francis was unhappy, it seemed clearer to him. The other things, the melancholy gazes out the window, the hanging back from games, the unreadable expression in his eyes when they got their morning updates from the newspaper. And it struck Arthur that Francis had been able to understand all along; he knew exactly what was happening to France—and he knew what the boys at Robinson House thought of them.

He no more partook in these morning conversations than he had when he didn't speak English, but neither did he leap to his country's defense. Any attempt, he knew, would ultimately be useless—he was outnumbered by far and what could he say, to convince these cocky British boys that his country wasn't cowardly? He just picked at his breakfast and left most of it on the plate. He point-blank refused to acknowledge Arthur's existence at all, which wasn't really different from before, because they hadn't really spoken, but now it was a pointed snub and irked Arthur more than it should have.

And the war went on.

As Francis was generally quiet in class, even though he was now free to speak, it came as a bit of a surprise when he raised his hand out of the blue one morning in history class. Ms. Bailey paused in where she was describing the ANZAC attack on Gallipoli during the Great War and, after a moment, pointed to him.

"Yes, Bonnefoy?"

"What happens to the German's prisoners of war?" he asked, watching her with a quietly intent azure gaze. He had little interest in learning about world history from the British point of voice and found few reasons to pay attention in this class, but he knew Ms. Bailey could have information he DID want. That is, information concerning the whereabouts and fate of Francis' father, who had answered the first call to defend France when they declared war on Germany.

Mrs. Bailey's pause went on and on. Were it one of the other boys, she might've gone ahead and dismissed the question as unrelated to their current lesson. But Francis, of course, had a far more personal interest in the answer and, looking into the young boy's eyes, she struggled with what the moral thing was to do. She didn't want to brush off his question and give him no answer, but neither did she want to feed him the rumors going around about what _might_ be going on behind enemy lines with the POWs. At length, she decided the only thing she could do was to be honest.

"We don't know, I'm afraid," she said, lowering her hand from where she'd been indicating the point of attack of the ANZAC forces on a map hung from the rolling chalkboard. Francis considered this and she hesitated to continue, in case he was going to ask something else.

"Do you have an idea?" he asked.

"My big brother told me they use 'em as cannon fodder," declared Jimmy. "Dress 'em up in old German uniforms and line 'em up in front before they charge."

"No way, why would they waste uniforms on POWs?" asked Daniel. "They probably just shoot them," he told Francis in what was probably meant to be a gentle tone. "Kindest way, really. One quick bullet to the back of the head." He mimicked the action.

"I heard they eat them!" Henry exclaimed from the back of the classroom. More and more wild speculation about what the Germans did to their POWs sprang up until the whole class was abuzz and Ms. Bailey slapped her ruler on the desk.

"Enough!" Francis hadn't spoken since the chatter began, but his wide, horrified gaze was probably enough to make Ms. Bailey regret entertaining the subject at all. "No one is eating anyone, or feeding anyone to bears, or anything of the sort! Spreading nasty rumors only feeds fear, which will weaken the nation," she lectured, casting a stern look out at the assembled boys. "The truth of the matter is that we don't know and this kind of baseless speculation does no one any good." Averted eyes and hung heads populated the makeshift classroom. "Now, the allied forces approached the enemy from the coast…" She launched back into her original lesson and the room remained quiet.

After lunch, Francis was nowhere to be seen. Arthur meandered up and down the halls at a leisurely pace, telling himself he wasn't looking for the French boy, but then again, he thought to himself, he was the only one who knew the truth (this was a questionable matter, but Arthur was absolutely certain he was the only one who knew Francis was unhappy). He felt suddenly and inexplicably responsible for acknowledging Francis' misery.

He was passing the boiler room when he found the other boy. Half the room had been turned into a hastily constructed nurse's office, with an old camping cot to serve as a bed. Francis was lying on the cot with a damp washcloth over his eyes, breathing slowly and hiccupping occasionally. Arthur hovered in the doorway. He felt he ought to say something, but he had no idea what to say. Before he got the chance to think of something (or skulk away in silence), a couple other boys appeared by his side, probably wondering what he was staring at in the boiler room.

"Francis, we're going to play football!" piped up Ronald. Once it was out that Francis spoke English, he put a harsh end to being called anything but his full name (certainly none of that _Frank_ business). "Are you going to come play with us?"

"Not today," Francis replied in an odd voice that didn't sound like his own. "My head hurts." Ronald cast a disappointed look at his partner; like as not, they'd been sent to scout out the better football players for the game.

"Alright then…but if you change your mind, we'll be in the yard!" The pair scampered off, not bothering to ask if Arthur wanted to play, much to his affront.

"Are you just going to lay in here all afternoon?" he asked. Francis lifted a corner of the washcloth to catch a glimpse of Arthur in the doorway, then let it fall.

"Go away." In case Arthur wondered if he'd been forgiven for his earlier transgressions, there was his answer. But he wasn't driven away yet; he was a mulish thing and he was determined to achieve something here.

Arthur scratched at the doorframe quietly, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

"You should go play football," he said at last.

"Go away," Francis repeated. "I do not want to play football."

"Maybe you'd feel better if you played football," Arthur suggested. He didn't imagine lying in here feeling sorry about the war was going to make Francis feel any better.

"I do not even _like_ football," Francis declared, irritated with Arthur's persistence. Hadn't this boy caused him enough trouble already?

"What? You don't?" Who in God's name didn't like football? Arthur was pretty sure it was a cardinal sin not to like football. "But you know how to play!"

"I only know because my brother Antonio loved it," Francis grumbled. "I played because he did. He is far better than I am."

"Is he a soldier?" Arthur blurted out, digging his nails into his palm behind his back. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he half-regretted it.

"No," Francis murmured quietly. "He left for Spain with his fiancée a year before the war broke out." He hadn't seen his brother since, but at least he knew he was far away from the fighting. Not that there was much of it going on anymore, in France. That front was fallen.

"Hey look, I know you're upset because of your family in France and everything!" Arthur started to think he might want to reconsider that idea his mum had mentioned—that was, a filter between what he thought and what he said. "And you're homesick and all."

"However did you work that out?" Francis asked in a mocking tone, lifting the cloth off his face and pushing himself halfway up to a sitting position. Arthur colored. "What do you _want_?" Francis asked. "I am not going to join your football team."

"I just…" Francis' face was just slightly flushed from his earlier crying, but otherwise he looked normal, his sharp blue eyes fixated on Arthur in the doorway. A few strands of golden hair were stuck to the sides of his face from the wetness of the washcloth. Arthur shifted his weight around again and smoothed his shirt down unnecessarily. "Who says I want anything?" he asked, taking on an imperious tone he'd heard adults use before. "Maybe I just came to talk is all!"

Francis huffed through his nose and lay back down, one arm hanging limply off the side of the cot, clutching loosely at the washcloth.

"Of course. _Rosbif_ just wants conversation with the strange one, I understand. Or I would, if it was anyone but you."

"What did you just call me?" Arthur demanded. "You're being awfully rude you know! Especially when you haven't got anyone else to give you company!"

"Maybe I don't want company," Francis retorted, giving Arthur a pointed look. His cheeks pinked yet again, equal parts embarrassment and indignation.

"Well fine then! Wallow in misery on your own!" He stormed off down the hall, scurrying as fast as his short legs would take him. Stupid frog. Of course he wouldn't recognize when a person was just being _polite_. Even _nice_. Shouldn't have even bothered, Arthur thought irritably. A frog wouldn't know when to be grateful if someone saved his damn life.

Even so, Arthur began to listen with a little more awareness to the tirades of the other boys about the war. His gaze became more focused on Francis than Benny Clarke and the way that perceptive gaze avoided anyone else in the room when the subject of his country came up. And suddenly, he found himself uncomfortable listening to their easy condemnations. But he kept quiet, of course, because one never wanted to rock the boat, if at all possible.

Francis bounced back from the discussion of the German's POWs like a rubber ball. He was disconcerting that way, how he could shove his upset under a rug and smile and laugh like it had never happened. Arthur watched him closely as he walked into class the next day, as cheery as ever, as though searching for a crack in his façade. But there seemed to be none—at least not when he thought anyone was looking at him. Arthur's eye was not keen enough to pick up on the subtleties of Francis' grief. The boy was becoming a fantastic liar and a skilled actor, which made it all too easy for him to feign happiness, as he'd done the majority of his time here.

It was frankly weird, in Arthur's opinion.

He knew the signs of Francis' distress; that was easy to see in the dining room. But the things that ought to bother him more, like the discussion of the German's POWs…there was his initial breakdown and then it was as if it never occurred. Arthur wondered if Francis was still crying in the bathroom at recess.

"This is just like Napoleon!" Benny was saying to the assembled boys in the dining room after lunch. "They like to puff up and talk big, but when it comes down to it, it's just a bunch of hot air!" He sneered and put a foot up on one of the chairs. "If it were up to US to lead the charge, we'd have stopped this war before it even started!"

"Yeah!" There were several calls of agreement, as per the usual, and waving of hands and pounding of fists on the table. Arthur was slouched in his seat, bored and contemplating going to find a book. He had begun to notice a tiresome cyclical nature in these discussions; they were always the same thing rehashed time and time again. It grew old and the boys' false, groundless bravado grated him more and more.

"We shouldn't have even wasted our soldiers in that fight," Benny went on. "It wasn't worth it. We should've been focusing on our defense, rather than a useless ally!"

"Oh yes, fighting the Germans by ourselves would have worked so much better," Arthur muttered under his breath.

"If they'd let the British generals be in charge, we'd have won for sure," Dennis agreed. "And we'd all be home now instead of sitting around here!" More cries of assent.

"We'd have those men on the run!" Benny crowed, strutting along the length of the table.

"You can't even win a football game against the French," Arthur said, somewhat louder than he'd originally intended. "What makes you think you could win a war against the Germans?" Everyone turned to look at him and he half-regretted speaking. Benny's eyes narrowed, as though zeroing in on a target.

"That was one game," he said. "One battle doesn't win the war."

"Oh, stop talking like you know anything about war," Arthur scoffed, thrusting his chin up, deciding to fight. If Benny's older age cowed him at all, he didn't show it one bit. "You couldn't fight the Germans if your life depended on it."

"And you think you could?" Benny sneered, his nose wrinkling up in dislike.

"I didn't say that," Arthur replied with a shrug. "Only that you couldn't."

"You'd be just like the French," Benny accused, leaning forward on the table. "Waving the white flag within the hour, I guarantee it." There were a few loose snickers.

"Oh, _do_ go on and tell us again how you would have single-handedly held off Hitler's forces then," Arthur said. "You wouldn't have held out even as long as the French!" His eyes flicked briefly over to the side and caught sight of Francis watching the exchange from the corners of his eyes, his face turned only ever so slightly towards the engagement.

Benny caught his eye and followed it. A nasty smirk turned up his lips.

"What's the matter, frog?" he asked, turning his attention to Francis. "Following the lead of your countrymen and hiding behind an Englishman?" Francis' eyes closed for a moment, far too weary for this argument, and Arthur winced. He hadn't intended for that at all.

"I didn't ask for a defense," he said quietly, turning a page of the newspaper.

"Well this little runt seems to think you did," Benny said, jabbing a thumb in Arthur's direction.

"He would be mistaken," Francis said. There was a long pause and he looked up to meet Arthur's eyes. "Although I do appreciate hearing something new and different during these conversations." There was gratitude of some kind in his gaze, before it turned back down to the paper.

"You think you've got something better to say?" Benny challenged.

"Stop trying to pick a fight, you're making a prat out of yourself," Arthur broke in, his expression thoroughly unimpressed.

"Awfully quick to defend the frog," Benny said, even though Arthur had been nothing of a kind; he'd been listening to these conversations for nearly two months now with Francis right there and hadn't said a word. "Is it part of his football contract, or are you just that much of a kiss-up to the foreigners?"

"Oh why don't you stop pretending like you're so much better than they are?" Arthur demanded, getting to his feet. Quite apart from how these conversations wore on Francis, Arthur was now just irritated. He was sick of Benny's cocky boasting and he was sick of hearing the same insults and accusations recycled day after day just so they could all make themselves feel better. "You have no idea what the battle was like and you have no proof that we would have lasted any longer! If you remember, we were _there_, Clarke. We were there and together, we both lost. The French weren't on their own. We lost too. And they at least covered our backs while we got away, which is more than you would do in their place!"

"Maybe you'd rather go sit in Paris and salute the German flag then!" Benny retorted. This resistance was unexpected and, having only hereto received support day after day, he was blindsided by this attack on their nationalistic pride. Especially from Arthur, who seemed as British as one could get.

"That's not even close to what I said!" Arthur argued, glaring.

"It sounded awfully like it to me, you little twat!"

"What did you just call my brother?" The voice was quiet and Arthur's attention snapped too it; Dafffyd was entering the hall with a football tucked under one arm, probably seeking more players.

"You should hear him talking," Benny said. "Sounds just like a Vichy sympathizer if you ask me."

"Well no one asked you, Clarke," Daffyd said, walking up to the table. He looked over at Walter, more level-headed than Benny, and Walter gave a slight shake of his head. Benny was exaggerating; Walter didn't see as how Arthur had done anything but challenge Benny's overused dogma. "And if you go around talking to my little brother like that, I'm going to have to fight you. And I don't want to do that; I'd rather kick your arse in football."

Daffyd was nowhere near as hot-headed as Iain and Mairead (both of whom had stepped into schoolyard fights for their younger siblings at one point or another, in addition to their own copious fighting), but he was certainly not above a fight for the family honor. After all, what kind of big brother would he be if he let Benny beat the snot out of Arthur, who was nearly three years younger?

"You wouldn't win either," Benny said, stepping closer to Daffyd.

"Oh yeah?" Daffyd was goading him now; he could get Benny hooked on the idea of a game rather than this fight with Arthur. "Try me."

"Nobody gets the frog," Benny stipulated. His sore pride still hadn't recovered from the shock of finding out that Francis actually could play football.

"Fine by me," Daffyd said, holding Benny's muddy colored eyes steadily. There was a tense pause.

"Let's go then," Benny said. "Johnny, Thomas! Come on!" Daffyd turned and marched off with barely a glance at Arthur, but the blond sank back down onto his seat. He wasn't sure he appreciated Daffyd interrupting, but he also wasn't sure he wanted to end in fisticuffs with Benny, who was practically two heads taller than he was.

The room slowly emptied as people went to jump about in line, hoping to be chosen, or kick around clods of dirt and watch the game if they were not. Two or three stayed behind, playing some sort of game with rubber bands and marbles, and Francis, who was no longer reading the paper, but watching Arthur.

"Why did you do that?" he asked as Arthur uncomfortably held his gaze, wondering if he could leave now and not say anything.

"Nothing I said wasn't true," he muttered by way of reply, flicking his gaze away. "Besides, I'm ever so tired of hearing him say the same thing every day." Francis looked thoughtful.

"Well, whatever you meant, I appreciate it." He smoothed the paper with one hand, still waiting, perhaps to see if Arthur would say anything more enlightening about his surprising defense and shocking rip on Britain's own defense of France.

"It wasn't for you," Arthur asserted feebly. "He was just annoying me."

"Okay." Francis didn't bother arguing that point. Arthur took the brief silence to get up and go, before he got wrapped up in any other unfortunate social interactions. Better to stick with a book; they were far less confusing than blond, blue-eyed French boys with soft voices.

On Guy Fawkes Day, the teachers decided that something was needed to cheer up the boys, who were by now worn out of the excitement of living someplace new and beginning to wonder when the war would be over and they could go home. So they organized a scavenger hunt outside, provided the weather was good. They were supposed to choose partners. Daffyd went with Walter, which suited Arthur, because he didn't want to end up paired with his brother either. Then Henry went off with Ronald and that was fine, because Arthur didn't want to partner with the chatty young boy anyway. But then Arthur realized he didn't have anyone else in mind to partner up with, and when he looked around, it seemed like everyone had one already. Except Francis, who was scanning the folded up newspaper pages he'd slipped out of his pocket. Arthur gritted his teeth and marched up to him. He wasn't going to wait for one of the teachers to tell him to partner with Francis.

"I need a partner," he said. Francis looked up and then down at him. His eyes flicked around and he noticed everyone else had gathered a partner.

"I suppose you do," he said, and Arthur bristled, because it wasn't as if Francis had one either! Arthur thrust the bit of paper, which had the list on it of things they were supposed to collect.

"We need to find this stuff," he said. "And we're going to win. I'm not letting Daffyd or Benny Clarke claim victory. Or Henry. Or James. Or—"

"It's supposed to be fun, I think," Francis said mildly, taking the list and looking over it.

"It'll be fun when we win," Arthur said. "Now come on! Everyone else is getting started already!" He led Francis out of the house into the yard, where the things were hidden. Francis trotted along at his side and seemed more interested in the scenery of the watery blue morning than finding their bits and bobs. Boys scattered across the yard and delved into the woods, calling out and waving their arms as they sought out the small goals. Arthur, who had long since familiarized himself with the woods on the Robinson property, marched them confidently into the trees.

"We need a raven feather," Francis told him idly. Fall was just starting to roll into winter and there was a chill in the air; Francis stuck his free hand into his coat pocket.

"Right." Arthur nodded and the quest began. It lasted several hours and Francis proved he actually was capable of being talkative with Arthur—when it came to complaining. His feet were sore and this was boring and they still had too many things to find and it was muggy out and he had a rock in his shoe and there was a big spider on that tree and—

"I'm taking a break," he declared at last, sitting down on a grassy knoll.

"We have to find the flat stone!" Arthur exclaimed, waving the list around over his head.

"Find it yourself," Francis said, folding his arms behind his head and closing his eyes.

"You're the most useless partner ever!" Arthur shouted at him. "I'm going to win the prize myself!" He was breathing heavily, working himself into what his mother would call "a state". Francis opened one eye.

"Arthur, if you are not having fun, why are you doing it?" he asked.

"Because I want to win!" Francis let out an amused huff through his nose.

"And winning will make up for hours of upsetting yourself about it?" he asked. The list fell limply against Arthur's side, his hands dropping. It was as though Francis had proposed a completely foreign idea that had never entered his head, the idea that the game was not all about winning. He stared.

"But if we don't win, someone else will," he objected at last.

"And the world will end, I'm sure," Francis said, closing his eyes again. He could still feel Arthur standing there, watching him, so he inclined his head slightly to the space next to him without opening his eyes. "You can sit," he said. The silence stretched on and then there was the slight rustle of clothing and the list as Arthur took a seat in the grass.

"We should find the stone," he said.

"Isn't the sky lovely today?" Francis asked, looking up and opening his eyes.

"Why are you suddenly talking to me?" Arthur asked. "I thought you hated me." Francis gave a short burst of laughter that surprised Arthur and his attention snapped over to the boy next to him. Francis' pretty blue eyes were bright with amusement, in a way Arthur had never seen before and a slight smile tugged at his rosy lips.

"I never hated you," he said. "I did not like you at all, but I didn't hate you. And you have been…better," he said. "Nicer. I think. You tried."

Arthur wasn't sure if he should be offended or not.

"I wasn't being nice," he grumbled, pulling at the grass.

"You felt sorry for me, did you not?" Francis asked, looking up at Arthur.

"I most certainly did not!" Arthur looked criminally offended by the very idea.

"I think you are nicer than you pretend," Francis mused, reaching over with one hand. He poked Arthur in the side and the English boy yelped and nearly tipped over away from him.

"Hey! Wanker, don't just go touching people like that!" he snapped, swatting at Francis as he righted himself. Those blue eyes were still sparkling and Arthur knew his scolding hadn't done a thing. Somehow, it didn't seem like a total disaster.

"You are like a…a…le…what is the word for the rabbit with spikes?" he asked Arthur.

"Rabbit with spikes?" Arthur echoed, thick brows furrowing. "What in God's name are you talking about?"

"The…" Francis made unhelpful motions with his hands. "Small…like a mouse or a rabbit…" Arthur just stared at Francis like he was a loon. "It has spikes…and the teeth…" He made a fang-like gesture.

"You mean…a rodent?" Arthur asked.

"I think so. And it's small…with spikes…" Arthur didn't think he was going to get anything else helpful out of Francis, so he tried to think of spiked rodent-like creatures.

"You mean…a porcupine?" he asked.

"Yes! No! Like that, but smaller," he said.

"A hedgehog?" he guessed, quite proud of himself for figuring that out.

"Yes! A hedgehog," he said, struggling to sound the word out. Arthur snorted at the sound of Francis' ridiculous accent trying to pronounce "hedgehog". At least half the sounds were missing. "Don't laugh! You are. All prickly and rolled up on the outside," he said. "But small, with big teeth."

"I do not have rodent teeth!" Arthur objected furiously, his laughter immediately replaced with a heated glare.

"No, maybe not," Francis agreed, shaking his head. "But les sourcils…" He place his fingers over his eyebrows and Arthur didn't need to speak French to know what that comment was about.

"Oh, shut up!" Arthur leaned over and grabbed Francis' wrists to pin them away from his face. "Not all of us can look like little girls!"

"Are you saying I look like a little girl?" Francis asked, seemingly not bothered by Arthur's attack.

"_Obviously_," he said.

"Am I a pretty girl?" Francis asked, his lips twitching almost unnoticeably in amusement.

"What kind of a stupid question is that?" Arthur demanded, pinking slightly and pulling away from Francis. "You're not a girl!"

"But you said I look like one," Francis said. "So I want to know if I look like a pretty girl."

"No! You're not a pretty girl," he said tartly, crossing his arms.

"Hèlas, what a pity!" Francis cried, sitting up. "I'll just remain locked in this tower forever then!"

"You are absolutely barmy," Arthur told him, shaking his head in awed dismay. He'd never met a child who was more of a lunatic.

"Maybe I can defeat the dragon myself!" Francis went on regardless. He leaned over and grabbed both of Arthur's sides, making the boy yell in surprise and thrash to get away.

"Hey! Get off me, you git!" He squeaked as Francis' hand caught a soft spot on his side and he collapsed in the dirt, trying to crawl away.

"I win!" Francis exclaimed, letting go of Arthur, only to be knocked back into the ground. Arthur hadn't come here to wrestle, but he wasn't going to let this frog claim victory over him!

"Not a chance," he declared, pinning Francis' wrists again. Sadly for Arthur, he was two years younger and that much less mature than Francis, who easily threw him off and pinned him in return.

"Vive la France," he cooed with a patronizing smile. Arthur kicked him in the shin and he jerked back with a shout.

"Aie! Petit bête beast!" Francis rubbed his leg and glared resentfully at Arthur, who smirked. Francis cuffed him upside the head and Arthur caught his wrist and there were several more moments of struggling before they fell back in the grass to catch their breath.

"The list!" Arthur sat upright at once, remembering the scavenger hunt. They found the paper crumpled by the root of a tree, smudged with dirt. "Blast." Francis looked up at the afternoon sun.

"It's not too late to find the flat stone," he remarked. Arthur looked over at him.

"Probably too late to win," he groused.

"We can still try though," Francis suggested. Arthur looked up at him from the corners of his eyes, his lips curving up a touch.

"Then hurry up, frog," he said, pointing forward.

"Whatever you say, Commander Rosbif," Francis said breezily, strolling on ahead.

"Stop that insubordination!" the younger boy yelled at him, really just wanting a chance to use that new word he'd picked up. "And go look left! I'll take right!"


	3. Chapter 3

They didn't win the scavenger hunt. In fact, they were the last team back after a good deal of arguing and bickering over what to look for and where, and Francis picked up his complaining from earlier again when the second wave of enthusiasm wore off. Ms. White was nearly going to go out herself and look for them by the time they trundled back in, leaves in their hair, with all the things on the list.

"If you'd been faster we could've won," Arthur grumbled as they trudged upstairs to shower.

"If you hadn't gotten us lost and nearly run us into the next property over we could've won," Francis retorted, raking his hands through his hair to remove the forest debris. Arthur jabbed him in the side before exiting into his dormitory room to collect some clean clothes.

When Arthur went downstairs for dinner, he hesitated by the front of the room, trying to decide where to sit. There was an open seat by Francis that was giving him a bit of a crisis. The French boy looked over and met his eyes, his face open and guileless. But whether or not it was inviting, Arthur couldn't tell. Eventually Francis tired of waiting for Arthur to make a choice and turned his attention back to the conversation at the table. At length, Arthur sidled up and slid into the seat by Francis. They didn't speak much, save for Francis roping Arthur into the conversation a couple times, but they didn't fight either.

A couple days later, Arthur found Francis on the back porch with a newspaper he'd taken from the teacher's table. They'd already read the news aloud, but Francis, suspecting they were not telling all the truths there were to tell, was examining it for himself. Unfortunately for him, his reading comprehension was not as good as his spoken word and he struggled through the stiff, adult language of the paper.

"Did you nick that from the teachers?" Arthur asked when he saw the paper.

"Yes," Francis said unabashedly. "I have need of it." He continued to scrutinize the paper, sitting cross-legged on the swinging bench, long blond hair falling around his face as he hunched over the scraps of news. "Arthur—what's this word?" he asked, holding the paper out and pointing. If Arthur was going to be here, Francis may as well take advantage of his presence and grasp on English.

"Assumed," Arthur said, examining where Francis' finger indicated.

"And what does it mean?"

"It means…" Arthur looked up at the eaves, trying to figure out how to explain it. "When you think something even though you don't know for sure. But it seems like it might be true." Francis made a noise that sounded less than pleased and laid the paper back in his lap to keep reading. Arthur clasped his hands behind his back and watched him for a moment. "They already told us all the news about the war," he pointed out after a few moments.

"I am not so sure," Francis said, shaking his head. "Adults don't say everything, never. Because we're children." He wouldn't nearly put it past them to sugar-coat things or hold other things back, trying to protect the children. But Francis' investment in war news was far greater than the other boys; he _needed_ to know if there was news about France.

"You think they're not telling us everything," Arthur clarified for his own benefit. Francis glanced briefly up and nodded before going back to his work. "Well let me see, it'll be faster that way." He held his hand out for the paper and after a moment, Francis surrendered it. Arthur scanned the paper; his reading skill was great for his age, but even he had to re-read a few sentences; it was too easy to let his eyes glaze over reading through the dry language of the official paper. At last he shook his head. "I don't think there's much here they haven't told us."

"Nothing at all?" Francis asked, looking dismayed. He had counted on being able to find more information there. Arthur shook his head. The tone was grimmer than the teachers made it sound, but ultimately the outcome was the same—not that Arthur could really understand the finer points on diplomacy, alliances and what was going on in far-flung countries like Turkey or Ukraine.

Francis slumped and Arthur could see the brief spark drain out of him. It seemed a pity to him; there was something electric about seeing that flare of energy in Francis; Arthur felt charged by it. And he didn't like to see Francis looking so doom and gloom, even if he had good reason for it. But how to cheer him up…?

"You should...teach me how you kick the football like you do," Arthur blurted out. Normally he would never lower himself to ask for help on anything, but he DID want to be better and he thought maybe that would distract Francis from his melancholy.

He looked up at Arthur questioningly.

"You know how to play football," he said. To say nothing of his shock that Arthur asked for help—from him, of all people. Arthur opened his mouth to bluster and Francis knew Arthur wouldn't press if he dismissed the request like that. "But of course, I'm better." He tossed his hair and flashed a conceited look at Arthur. "I will try to teach you some of my great skill." He uncurled off the bench and stretched.

"Don't be a prat, or I'll hit you in the face with that ball," Arthur warned him as Francis strolled past him to collect the ball from the small collection of sports equipment inside.

Other boys were playing tag in the back of the house, so Francis and Arthur went out front and played around with the ball. Francis showed Arthur how he'd kicked it to make it go so far and tried to teach Arthur how to use his small size to his benefit when it came to weaving and stealing the ball. When they were tired, they flopped down in the overgrown grass, panting.

"How come you wanted to fake like you didn't speak English?" Arthur posed a question that had been flopping around in the back of his mind since he and Francis had gotten in the fight in the bathroom doorway.

"I wanted to not have to work," Francis said simply, leaning back on his hands as he caught his breath.

"What?" Arthur asked incredulously, gaping at him. "You pretended not to speak English so you didn't have to _work_?" Gallic laziness! The French had no sense of shame!

Francis gave a little smile, looking off, but there was something else in his eyes, something Arthur missed. Something not so teasing and lighthearted, or even jokingly self-deprecating.

"Do I not have lots of_ tragedie_ without math?" he asked.

"You're unbe_liev_able," Arthur told him, shoving his companion. Francis chuckled. As much as they fought and argued, if one examined the interactions of the boys, Arthur was one of the few who was willing to sit and wait for Francis to pick out and put together sentences in a language that was not his own.

"It worked, almost," he sulked, looking pointedly at Arthur. He was still annoyed that Arthur had given him away and now he was stuck doing schoolwork like all the British boys.

"French," Arthur snorted, shaking his head and getting to his feet. His snub nose wrinkled briefly and he looked down at Francis. "Well come on, get up! We're not done yet." Looking amused, Francis got languidly to his feet, a good four inches taller than Arthur, which annoyed the English boy as well. Most things about Francis annoyed Arthur.

But he did get up and keep playing, until it was starting to get dark and he quitted firmly to go back inside where it was warm and there was light. Arthur disappeared nearly as soon as his feet were through the door to go find a book, as he was wont to do.

Later that week, Arthur had given up on trying to forbid Francis from sitting next to him. Previous attempts had suffered rather pathetic failures anyway, so he just tossed the whole idea. Besides, Francis seemed to be one of the few among them who wasn't allergic to bathing, so he usually smelled decent and when they were packed in at the table, it made a difference. On the down side, he had very little concept of personal space and was constantly leaning over Arthur to talk or reach for something or get a look at the teachers reading the paper.

"…and last night another munitions factory was bombed," Ms. Bailey read, a heavy note in her voice. "Near the edge of London proper, on 2nd street." Arthur's grip on his spoon tightened.

"Qu'est-ce que c'est?" Francis whispered to him. Much to Arthur's annoyance, he was spending so much time with Francis that he was starting to pick up on French phrases. While he didn't know the exact meaning of "qu'est-ce que c'est", he knew it was a question. For him, it could mean anything from "What's going on?" to "What is this?" to "What's the matter?". He could generally catch Francis' drift with it, which in this case was probably wondering why Arthur was holding his spoon as though he was trying to break it in two with the sheer force of his grip.

In response though, he just shook his head. He wasn't going to talk about it, not here, surrounded by everyone else. He just went back to trying to eat his porridge, which suddenly seemed far less willing to go down his throat than it had a few minutes earlier. The boys at the table all lapsed into silence for a respectful forty-five seconds or so before they could no longer be troubled into solemnity by tragedies that didn't directly affect them, and were back to chatting and laughing and eating.

"Qu'est-ce que c'est?" Francis tried again when Ms. Bailey was done reading the news. Still, Arthur just shook his head and refused to answer. Francis gave up and they ate in silence.

Lessons seemed to go by in a dazed blur; all Arthur could think about was how long it would take for a letter to reach him from London, and what the news would be when it got here.

"Arthur!" Ms. White's voice finally reached him through his fog.

"Yes, ma'am!" He jumped in his seat and there were a few snickers from other boys.

"Can you tell us the answer to problem six?" she asked, her gaze reproachful.

"Er…" Arthur hastily scanned the board, trying to find problem six. It was a division problem much to his chagrin, which he didn't have a chance of figuring out off the top of his head. "Ah…"

"Twenty-six!" someone else shouted out the answer, apparently unable to hold back anymore, and Arthur let out a silent breath of relief.

"Thank you, Mackenzie, but let's let the others have a turn, yes? And Kirkland, next time try to keep your focus on the board, instead of in a daydream," Ms. White scolded each of them in turn.

"Yes, ma'am," they chorused shamefully.

After classes were done, Arthur sought out one of his most secretive nooks, a corner in an odd entryway to the attic entrance, which was locked, and holed up there with a book. But he couldn't make himself focus on the words, they kept getting blurry and he would read the same few words over and over again without understanding what it said.

"Mairead," he whispered, clutching the book to his chest. "Oh, blast." He rubbed at his eyes with one hand, trying to force the tears away, but it felt like fighting a losing battle until the door creaked. Someone was pushing on it, and Arthur hastily ducked his head down to appear like he was reading, only to glance up when whomever it was had entered. "Can't you see I'm reading?" he demanded.

"I just…came to sit. With you," Francis said, pushing the door back to its original position once he'd come in. True to his claim, he sat down next to Arthur and said nothing, and didn't look at him. Arthur again tried to read his book, but his lower lip kept quivering, and he ended up having to put a lot of energy towards not crying in front of the stupid French boy. He regretted reaching out to Francis in his distress now, because it seemed Francis felt the need to reciprocate. "It's okay to cry," he commented softly, looking over at Arthur at last.

"It's not going to solve anything," Arthur argued in a wobbly, strained voice.

"It maybe will make you feel better," Francis suggested. Arthur sniffed hard.

"I don't see how that will help," he disagreed.

"Sometimes…it is good to admit you are sad," Francis explained with some thought about how to say it. "It is…harder to not show it." Arthur just shook his head, not trusting his voice to speak anymore. But it did feel like an awful effort to keep everything trapped in his chest, and had already seen Francis cry, so the other boy had no room to make fun of him.

"My sister," he squeaked out at last, clutching the book.

"She works in the building? The one that was hit?" Francis guessed. Arthur nodded rapidly, blinking furiously. "I'm sorry," he said at once, looking a bit unsure how to comfort Arthur. "Maybe she will write you soon." If she had survived. Arthur nodded again, and a pair of tears slipped free in quick succession. He tried to wipe them away, but Francis reached out and drew him into an embrace regardless. He stiffened at first, but then dropped the book and grabbed onto Francis instead, pushing his face into Francis' shoulder.

Trying to speak quickly proved to be a useless endeavor, so he gave up and just sniffled and wept, quietly at first, then with less restraint, until his whole body shuddered with hiccups. Before long he found he wasn't just crying about the possibility that Mairead was dead, but that London was under attack at all, and that he'd been separated from his family, and that so many people on the continent were suffering because of the fighting. It was all so bloody unfair, he could hardly stand it.

_I want mummy_, was the only fully coherent thought he could come up with. But she was so many miles away and he wouldn't see her again until the war was over, and who knew how long that would be? The Great War had gone on four years!

Francis squeezed him, pressing his cheek against the side of Arthur's head. "It's okay," he whispered. "Waiting for news is the worst."

When Arthur had finally cried himself out, he pulled away and straightened up, scrubbing at his reddened cheeks with his shirt sleeves.

"Cold water helps your face and eyes," Francis advised. Remembering seeing him rinse his face in the bathroom, and lying in the boiler room with the cloth over his eyes, Arthur nodded. They got off the floor and Francis took Arthur to one of the washrooms to help him splash his face and dry it off. "Better?"

"You didn't have to do this," Arthur muttered, covering his face with the hand towel again, although it was already dry.

"It's okay," Francis assured him with a cautiously cheery note in his voice. "I always wanted to have a little brother."

"No!" Arthur's voice came out jarringly sharp and loud, and Francis looked surprised. "I already have three older siblings, two brothers! I don't want another one!" Francis relaxed again and pulled Arthur into a loose hug, giving him the feeblest of noogies.

"I will just pretend on my own then," he said, while Arthur shoved at his chest, trying to escape the hug.

"No," he whined. He didn't even like the idea of Francis thinking of him as a little brother. They were _friends_, not brothers. "You're only allowed to think of me as a friend!"

"Are we friends?" Francis asked, clasping his hands behind his back. Arthur's face flushed and he gave Francis a look, working his jaw, trying to avoid having to answer the question out loud. He debated internally how apropos the word "friends" was for their relationship.

"Well if we're not, then you can get lost," Arthur said, hanging the hand towel back up on its hook.

"Get lost where?" Francis canted his head to the side like a curious puppy and Arthur rolled his eyes.

"Beat it, scram, go away," he clarified.

"So we are friends?" If Francis could tolerate Arthur's constant insults and stunted attempts at social interaction, he supposed Francis had to be his friend.

"Yes," he said, but his mood was rapidly deteriorating again. He felt guilty for forgetting even a moment that Mairead could be lying buried under a heap of rubble even as he stood here talking with Francis. He remembered the terrible noise of the bombs falling, and the even more terrible sight of the streets afterwards. The thought of Mairead crushed under one of those piles of stone and concrete made his throat constrict again.

"Hey, now," Francis said gently, putting a hand on Arthur's arm. "Why don't we go outside? You feel better when you're outside."

"How do you know?" Arthur asked, focusing his attention on keeping his voice steady. He felt proud of his efforts.

"Because if you are not reading in some corner, you're outside," Francis said. "You look happy." Arthur couldn't argue this point, so he just nodded and followed Francis out of the washroom. When they pushed open the back door, however, it was raining. A few boys sat crowded on the corner of the deck, morosely watching their football field turn to mush.

"Winter is the worst," said one drearily.

"Aye," sighed Ronald, leaning against the railing around the deck. "There's nothing to _do_."

"Does it snow here?" Francis asked, taking a seat on the swinging bench and gesturing for Arthur to come join him.

"Yeah, shouldn't be long now," said one of the boys. It was in the air; the chill of it nibbled at Arthur's nose and ears and he folded his legs on the seat. "But hey, when that happens, we can have a big snowball fight!"

"Yeah!" Ronald agreed. "Boy, that'll be fun."

Arthur didn't contribute much to the conversation that continued, and Francis offered just enough to keep it rolling, but he was a bit surprised to find it soothing white noise. If he could just pretend everything was normal, maybe it would be when he woke up in the morning.

Daffyd found him that night before dinner.

"Hey." He sat down in the desk next to Arthur, who was in one of the classrooms, working on an essay for history. They didn't often have essays, given the informal nature of the schooling, but Arthur felt sure he could write the best one. Yet no matter how long he stared at the first paragraph he'd manage to get out during class, he couldn't think of anything else to say about the Glorious Revolution. He knew there was so much _to _say, but none of it was in his head.

"I'm writing an essay," Arthur said, by which he plainly meant _Go away._

"Looks to me like you're staring at a page with four sentences on it," Daffyd said. Arthur couldn't think of a reply to that either. "I wanted to talk to you about Mairead."

"There's nothing to talk about," Arthur said rigidly, gripping his pencil. "Mummy will write."

"She…she could be hurt," Daffyd said, shuffling his feet on the floor.

"Mummy will write."

"Listen, Arthur, she—something could have happened!" Daffyd insisted. "We have to—be prepared!"

"Be prepared for what?" Arthur demanded, lowering his pencil and glaring up at Daffyd with a quivering mouth. They looked at each other a long moment.

"She could…you know. Just…if you…just...you can talk to the Misses, if you want…and I'll let you know when we get a letter from Mumm—from Mum." Another silence.

"She'll write soon," Arthur said. "I bet she's already sent it."

"She might have. But it may take time to get here," Daffyd warned. "It could be a few weeks, Arthur."

"I can wait." Arthur raised his pencil again, and resumed pretending to work.

"Why are you so difficult?" Daffyd snapped, straightening up.

"Why are you acting like you're Dad or something?" Arthur shot back, scribbling down a sentence just to spite him.

"Because I'm your older brother and I'm here to talk to you, dammit!"

"Well you've talked!" Daffyd let out a weary sigh and covered his eyes.

"Just don't go having a breakdown, alright?" he said. "We don't know anything yet, and there's no sense being anxious until Mum writes."

"I'm not having a breakdown," Arthur said. "Are you?"

"No, I'm not having a breakdown!" Daffyd began to regret ever having come, but he was rather obliged. "Just don't worry, right?" He said a bit more aggressively and irritated than he'd meant.

"Right. Don't worry," Arthur echoed, staring at the desk. "I won't."

"Good." Daffyd remained a moment more, then got to his feet to go. He put a hand on Arthur's shoulder, as if he was going to say something else, but didn't.

Emotional connection was not a strong suit of the Kirkland siblings.

Despite Arthur's vehement protests against Francis taking on the role of his big brother, he had to admit the lad was more attentive in the role than anyone he'd seen. He seemed to have made it his personal mission to distract Arthur as much as possible while they waited for news of his sister. It was difficult with the rain and snow entrenching them in the house, but he did his best.

When Arthur was losing himself in contemplations about his family in London, Francis was there with a bright smile and something funny to say about one of the other boys, or something he'd seen. When Arthur wanted to curl up under his blankets and forget about the rest of the world, Francis was around to make him come have a snowball fight, or draw pictures on the back of old homework. But when Arthur wanted nothing more than to be alone, Francis was also usually around to shield him from the rest of the house, which was as alone as he would get in a house with thirty boys in it.

Arthur was so focused on his own grief and Francis' many distractions, he forgot that Francis must have been thinking of his own family as well.

Henry was the one who remembered.

The three of them were sitting on the floor in a back corner of the library, because Henry had never lost the shine he'd taken to Arthur at the train station, never mind Arthur's many attempts to get the boy to leave him alone. It was getting late, near lights-out time, but none of them felt very inclined to get up and leave. They were full of bland, warm, rationed food and it was a Friday night, and Francis had been trying to describe Paris for them, but even he admitted he'd only been there once.

"What's your mummy like?" Henry asked abruptly, looking at Francis. "Is she like ours? I reckon mummies are the same everywhere, but I never been outside of England before."

Francis' face softened at once. "She's very pretty," he said. "And she hums when she cooks sometimes, very pretty songs. Oh, and her cooking," he sighed, leaning back against the wall, closing his eyes. "Oh, her cooking is the best in the world." A faint smile spread across his face and his teeth worried his lower lip with aching desire. "She makes bouillabaisse and pot-au-feu and the most delicious ham sandwiches…ah, and sometimes when grandmother comes over, we have fondue!"

None of these silly French words meant very much to Arthur and Henry, but they were funny to hear, and Francis seemed to enjoy remembering.

"It's not like here at all," he said, shaking his head. "Here, everything is so…tastes like nothing. And feels…wrong. In your mouth." Arthur was accustomed enough to listening to Francis to know he hadn't been able to think of the words or phrases he wanted, so substituted something less eloquent or grammatically correct. "Maman could be a cook," he declared quietly. "When I left," he said, speaking of his departure for the first time since Arthur had known him (he leaned in to hear better), "she told me the food in Britain is terrible, and I will have to remember her cooking when I am gone."

"It's not terrible!" Arthur exclaimed.

"You have never had my mother's cooking," Francis pointed out.

"And _you've_ never had a good Shepherd's pie!" Arthur countered. The phrase meant no more to Francis than "pot-au-feu" meant to Arthur, judging by his expression.

"Can't they both be good?" Henry asked, sitting up straighter and crossing his legs. "I'd be glad for anything that's not peas and porridge anymore!"

"Yes," Francis sighed in emphatic agreement. "Me also."

"Me three," Arthur echoed after a few moments, feeling obliged to share in their war-induced unhappiness, even though he didn't see anything very wrong with eating the same thing day in and day out.

Henry glanced anxiously at the windows. "Maybe we oughta be getting to bed now," he said. "I don't want the Misses to catch us out here."

"Aye, probably," Arthur grunted, laying back on the floor. Only when he heard Francis pulling himself up to his feet did he rise and follow the others out of the small library.

Sunday, two weeks after the news of the factory, Arthur and Daffyd got a letter from home. The very first sentence after their names was _Mairead is fine_ and he almost burst into tears at the breakfast table. When they left, he could barely contain his smile, and Francis looked quite perky when he came up to him.

"You have good news?" he asked, clasping his hands behind his back and rocking onto his heels.

"Yes! My sister is safe," Arthur announced, the smile breaking out. Francis smiled as brightly as Arthur had ever seen.

"Très bien! That is good news!" He grabbed Arthur's hands. "Oh Arthur, I'm so happy for you."

"She wrote some of the letter too," he said, letting go of Francis to shift through the two pages. "She's out of work for now, but she's looking for another factory job."

"After hers was attacked?" Francis asked, his eyes widening.

"Seems so. Mairead isn't scared of anything," Arthur informed Francis.

"She must be very courageous," Francis agreed. Arthur spared a heartbeat to be impressed with Francis' vocabulary, not knowing the word was nearly the same in French. He was silent in response, and after a long pause Francis spoke again. "So…how are you?" The stress of it all must have been exhausting.

"I…" Arthur thought about it, scrunching the letter in one hand. "I want to go play football!" Francis smiled again.

"Let's go then! It's cold, but I think Walter will play anyway," he said enthusiastically.

"You get goalie!" Arthur took off at a jog (running indoors was forbidden) to the back door, and Francis didn't protest, but followed after him with his swishy, flouncy walk.

Arthur scored two goals and they went back inside when they couldn't feel their fingers or the tips of their noses anymore, and Francis had been complaining for a least a half an hour.

Christmas passed them by quietly, with more muffled crying in the night than fanfare. They made some paper snowflakes, and Dennis Hall cut his fingers open on scissors pretending to have a sword fight with an imaginary opponent. The Misses hung some tinsel, and Francis said down south they had 13 days of dessert to celebrate Christmas. Everyone agreed that 13 desserts sounded like a fine way to celebrate anything.

What they got was canned pudding.

It seemed to Arthur that by Christmastime, the war had been going on forever. By January, he was dismayed to realize he couldn't picture the face of the man at the candy shop down the street from his school anymore. What if he forgot all about home? What if he was here so long Angus didn't recognize him when he came back? What if Angus had _died_ and Mummy hadn't said so because she didn't want to worry him!

Winter weather was now too firmly on top of them to allow much outdoor play, and this only further added to the gloomy mood hanging over Robinson House.

Late one night, after lights-out, Francis and Arthur were lying in Arthur's bed, whispering.

"I wonder if anything's changed at home," Arthur said to Francis.

"I wonder what's happened with my friends," Francis replied, his big eyes dark with worry. This was a look Arthur saw so frequently on Francis' face, he thought he'd be glad to never see it again.

"Your friends?" he echoed, thinking of Walter and Billy.

"Yes. At home," he said. Somehow it had never occurred to Arthur that Francis had friends at home in France. "I never thought I would want to go back to school," he joked with a feeble laugh.

"_You?_ Want to go back to school?" Arthur's tone was incredulous. He'd never known Francis to do a lick of work he wasn't absolutely required to, and watched over for.

"If I was at school, things would be normal," Francis reasoned.

"That's not so, plenty of kids are still going to school and things aren't normal," Arthur objected. Francis' mouth scrunched, and Arthur knew he had not said exactly what he meant.

"If _I _was," he insisted. "Back home. Not here."

"You mean after the war?" Arthur guessed, and Francis nodded. He wondered how Francis was going to get home when things were over. But he didn't get to ask, because they heard footsteps then. Arthur shoved Francis' head under the covers, and he felt the French boy squirming around trying to find an inconspicuous place to lie. He jerked the covers up to his neck and closed his eyes. None of the other boys were very bound to sell them out, but if they were caught, the Misses would be displeased.

The footsteps halted just outside the door, and Arthur heard the breath of the door being pushed open a few inches more. Silence as one of the Misses peered into the darkness, then the door was pulled back to its original position, and the footsteps moved on. Arthur pulled the covers further up, and ducked under.

"Is she gone?" Francis asked in a quieter whisper still.

"Yeah, she's gone." Francis uncurled a bit and laid his head on Arthur's pillow, the blanket tented over them. For a few moments, they made no noise but the sound of their breathing; the arrival of the Miss had shaken the normalcy from a conversation that, at its heart, was about how frightened they were.

"I miss home," Arthur blurted out.

"Me too," Francis said. "Do you miss your family?" Arthur gnawed his lower lip, feeling that the answer was yes, but not wanting to appear childish. Yet somehow it seemed that if he were to say no, and deny them, the pain of missing them would be all the worse, so he confessed.

"Yes." He didn't need to hear Francis speak to know his answer was the same.

"They will be okay," Francis told him, reaching out to take his hands. "Our parents lived through the Great War, they'll live through this too." Arthur tried to nod, but his throat was aching again, as it did sometimes late at night. Francis moved a little closer, and worked his arms around Arthur to pull him into a hug. There were no protests, and Arthur squeezed his eyes shut, putting every ounce of his energy into believing what Francis said.

They had intended for Francis to return to his own dorm when they were done socializing, but when Arthur opened his eyes, the sky outside the frost-covered window panes seemed lighter, and Francis was disentangling himself delicately from the sheets. He hissed at the cold outside their blanket cocoon. Arthur pulled the covers up to his nose, and watched Francis pick his way across the room and out the door.

The sun wasn't up yet, but he judged breakfast would be soon. At this time of year, it was dark when they got up, and dark when they went to bed. He was thinking he might have a little while longer to lay in his warm bed when Miss Bailey appeared, clanging the morning bell.

"Breakfast, lads!" she called. "Everyone up and dressed!"

Ah, well. At least he'd gotten a good night's rest.

Letters continued to come fairly regularly from home. In March, Arthur turned 11, and boasted to nine-year-old Henry that he was an adult now. In July, Francis turned 13 and told Arthur in a snobby tone that he was a teenager now, not a child like the rest of them (or most; a couple other boys had broken the 13 year marks since their arrival). In August, just past a year since they all first arrived at Robinson House, Ms. Edwards took him aside before breakfast.

"Kirkland, I need to speak with you," she said. "We have been in contact with your mother." _So have I_, Arthur thought.

"Do you need Daffyd too?" he asked, looking around.

"No, just you," she said. Puzzled, Arthur followed her into one of the classrooms, which doubled as an office for both her and Ms. Bailey. She sat down at the desk and straightened some papers. "Given the circumstances of the war, and growing concerns about the safety of Britain, your mother has followed a number of others in making a choice for your future."

_My future?_ Arthur wondered, standing silently before the desk, waiting for Ms. Edwards to continue.

"We're sending you to America."

AN: K so I know I posted this fic like two years ago and said I "might" continue it. I did have ideas, but this fall I just had a rush of them, so here's another update. Rather than expecting this fic to ever update regularly (I am determined to keep this a stress free, write when I feel like it project), just think of each chapter as a "bonus" from the first two. Here's bonus chapter #1.


	4. Chapter 4

"_America_? We're going to America?" Arthur's back went rigid with shock.

"Just you," Ms. Edwards corrected him gently. "Daffyd will be staying here." Arthur's stomach twirled unpleasantly, and his hands fidgeted behind his back.

"But why?"

"Why are you going to America, or why is your brother staying here?" Ms. Edwards asked.

"Both," Arthur replied.

"You're going because it will be safer for you there," Ms. Edwards said. "In the event of more bombing, or a land invasion…America is the safest place for you to be. It will be much harder for Germany to reach America, and Japan is occupied in Asia. But it does cost money, and Mrs. Kirkland can only afford to send one of you."

Arthur just looked at her, trying to comprehend what on this earth was going on. Nothing made sense anymore; he felt like he'd followed Alice into the rabbit hole. Next she was going to tell him Daffyd was going to China and Greece was taking the lead in the war.

"That's all, if you'd like to go get your breakfast," she prompted him, when he didn't seem like he was going to react. Arthur nodded dumbly and turned to go. It was only at the door he froze and spun back around.

"When am I going?" he asked.

"With some other children, in November," she said. Arthur nodded, and took his leave. But he found that he didn't have even an inkling of an appetite anymore. Instead of going into the breakfast hall, he went out the back door, and walked at a fast clip into the woods.

America…America was a million miles away, and might as well have been Mars. If coming up to Robinson House had been exile, what was being sent to America? It would take a bloody month to send a letter from America!

Paying no attention to his trajectory, Arthur walked faster and faster the more agitated he grew. Was the war really going that badly? Did Mum think Britain was going to lose? Crickey, if Britain lost, what would happen to the family? He thought of Francis, and his throat went dry as a desert. Would it be him, sitting by himself in some foreign classroom, crying in the bathroom at recess, and longing for even the tiniest comfort from home? Would the Nazis set up a puppet government in London too?

By the time he bumped into the tree, he was panting like a caged animal and shuddering. He clung to the tree trunk for support.

_Calm down_, he ordered himself, digging his nails into the bark. Britain hadn't lost yet. It wasn't over yet.

Daffyd was waiting for him near the back porch when he returned.

"There you are, thought you'd run off," he said, looking genuinely relieved that Arthur had come back. "I guess they told you then?"

"You knew?" Arthur halted, looking up at his brother. Daffyd rubbed the back of his neck and looked out at the grassy field behind the house.

"I thought it'd be best if they told you," he confessed. "It's all for the best, Arthur."

"Sending me away is for the best?" The young boy glared daggers. "That's not what you said when we got sent away!"

"Things are different now!" Daffyd argued. "That was over a year ago and—"

"And now you're so grown-up you know what's best!" Arthur steamrollered whatever else Daffyd had been going to say.

"That's not it," Daffyd snapped. "You're acting like a child!"

"And you're acting like a son of a bitch," Arthur told him, marching up the back steps and elbowing past Daffyd into the house.

When he saw Francis in math class, his first impulse was to blurt out what he'd learned, that he was going away again, but something stopped him. It was as though his jaw seized up and he couldn't force it open to speak the words; a curse had overtaken him.

_Francis_, he thought._ Francis they're sending me away. I'm going to America. I don't know when I'll be back. You can write, can't you? I'm being sent to America. My parents are sending me to America._

He said nothing.

He said nothing when he, Francis, Ronald and Henry were kicking a football around the muddy grass out back. He said nothing when they went inside because Francis had cold feet, and sat in a circle telling scary stories. He said nothing when they sat at the dinner table and talked about the news from that morning.

He said nothing until three days later, when Francis marched up to him on one of the sofas.

"Is it true?" he demanded, his arms folded across his thin chest.

"Is what true?" Arthur asked, looking up from his book.

"Your brother tells me you will go to America soon," he said. "Is it true?" A flash of anger at Daffyd rushed through Arthur, though he hadn't told him not to tell. In fact, he hadn't spoken a word to him since the tête-à-tête on the porch. Francis didn't seem to need an answer; his expression went from confrontational to defeated. "Why did you say nothing?" he asked, frowning.

"I…I don't know." _I didn't know what to say. I wanted it to not be true. I wanted to pretend it wasn't going to happen. _"I just didn't feel like it." Francis' eyes were surprised a moment, then downcast. His mouth turned down in a less severe frown; he seemed to withdraw from the interaction.

"When are you going?" he asked quietly.

"November," Arthur replied.

"Several months," Francis said. Arthur nodded. It sounded like a long time, but Francis had the feeling it was going to go by much too fast. "Good luck in America." When Arthur said nothing else, Francis bade him luck and left. Arthur had the sense he had done something wrong, but he couldn't think what it had been.

The next morning at breakfast, Francis shuffled in after Arthur, made eye contact with him, and then sat next to Walter Harris and didn't speak to Arthur for the whole meal.

"What's got a bee in his bonnet?" Arthur complained to Henry, who had, naturally, found a seat next to Arthur.

"Who? Frankie?"

"He'll sulk if he hears you call him that," Arthur warned.

"Oh right, oopsie. What's the matter though? He not talking to you?" Henry asked, spooning up a mouthful of anemic oatmeal. A bit dripped down his chin, and he smeared it with one hand.

"He just looked right at me, and then sat over there," Arthur said.

"Maybe you've bothered him," Henry suggested.

"By what? Existing?" Arthur demanded, slapping his spoon lightly on the oatmeal. "What a priss. I hope Walter knocks over his milk."

Francis went on ignoring him for over a week. Eventually Arthur was forced to break his own shunning of Daffyd to ask what the hell Francis' problem was.

"How should I know?" his brother asked. "I don't really talk to him that much. And not about whatever fights you've gotten into."

"It doesn't make any sense," Arthur fumed, folding his arms and leaning against the wall. Daffyd was trying to puzzle out a math problem from class; there were a few other boys still in the classroom struggling through the work. "He's being a right git and he has no reason."

Daffyd heaved a sigh and raked a hand back through his dark brown curls. "What was the last thing you said to him?"

"I told him I was going to America," Arthur said.

"No you didn't, I did," Daffyd said. Arthur remembered this, and how Francis had come to him already upset.

"It's your fault!" he exclaimed in outrage. "You made him mad at me!"

"Bloody hell, Arthur, why don't you go talk to him yourself instead of coming to me?" Daffyd barked. "Sometimes you have to talk to your friends to solve your problems, you know. You upset him somehow, you have to figure it out!" He bowed his head back over the impossible math problem and Arthur slunk out of the room.

He found Francis sitting on the rug in the parlor with some of the other boys, playing jacks.

"It's too hard to play on a carpet," Dickie was saying.

"We ain't got enough jacks for another player," Willy warned Arthur in his thick Cockney accent as he approached. Francis didn't look at him.

"Oh, he can have mine," Fred declared, getting up. "I'm losing anyway. Have at it, Kirkland." Although he hadn't come to play, Arthur sat down, and like clockwork, Francis got up.

"Hey!" Arthur called out, but Francis waltzed through the doorway anyhow, not slowing his step. Offended, Arthur gaped, and then bounced the ball too hard, and whacked the ceiling, and had to crawl under an armchair to get it back.

It took a few more days, but he finally managed to corner Francis in his dorm when he went back at lunchtime to get something.

"You have to talk to me," he told Francis, spreading his feet apart to try to take up the whole doorway. Thankfully it was narrow, so he was fairly successful.

"No I don't," Francis said, looking over at the sound of Arthur's voice, then hastily turning back to his bed.

"Ha! You just did," Arthur sneered. "But you have to—"

"I don't have to do anything," Francis informed him sharply, turning his Apollonian visage back to Arthur. "Particularly not for someone who doesn't even tell me he's leaving!"

"I was going to tell you eventually," Arthur argued.

"But you _didn't,_" Francis said, grabbing a swirly-patterned rock from beneath his bed.

"Daffyd beat me to it, I was going to!" he insisted. "You can't be mad about that!"

"Stop telling me what I can do!" Francis snapped, clenching his fist around the rock. "You said we were friends and then you didn't tell me!" Realization burst forth in Arthur's mind and he understood, in a jolt of surprise, that he had hurt Francis' feelings.

"I wasn't trying to hide it," he said, but there was no relaxation of Francis' features. "I just…I don't know I…I was stupid, okay? I should have told you." There was at least a flicker of righteous agreement on the French boy's face, that was something. "I didn't tell anyone else either," he tried.

Unable to maintain his anger anymore, Francis' shoulders slumped. "It will be…not good here without you," he said. "It will be…like when you have no one to talk to."

"Lonely," Arthur said. Neither of them said anything else, and then Arthur said, "I'm sorry." Francis hesitated, but came over and hugged Arthur gently.

"I'm not mad anymore," he said. "But I will miss you." Arthur nodded. He didn't hug back, but he slouched against Francis until the other boy pulled away.

They forgot about it until November. For Arthur, it was an omnipresent cloud hanging over his head, but they spoke no more of it until it was less than two weeks away. Then, suddenly, it was bearing down on Arthur like the hungry wolf in Mummy's stories, and he became visibly anxious.

Francis found him sitting on a stair one day, an open book on his lap, staring blankly ahead at the wall. Taking a seat next to him, he said, "Are you thinking about America?"

"Uh-huh." Arthur forced himself to blink and looked over at Francis. "It's…it's so soon."

"Are you scared?"

"Scared!" Arthur tried to scoff, but there was a slight tremor in his voice.

"It's okay to be scared," Francis told him.

"I'm not scared."

"Okay." They were quiet, and then Francis added, "But if you was scared, I think you should think of it like one of your books."

"What do you mean?" Arthur glanced down at the novel on his lap.

"Adventure," Francis theorized. "This is your adventure." Arthur pursed his lips.

"I hadn't really thought of that before," he said. "But…I suppose you're right. It's like my own quest." He smiled. "There's just no treasure at the end. Like in _The Hobbit_." Francis, who had no idea what _The Hobbit _was, nodded.

"You must be courageous," he said. "Like the people in your books." He tapped the one on Arthur's knees. "Knights must always be brave for the princess."

"I don't know any princesses," Arthur said.

"Imagine," Francis told him, reaching out a mussing up Arthur's hair with a laugh. Arthur swatted uselessly at his hand, and then grabbed the book and threatened to hit him with it. Francis leaped to his feet and danced out of reach. "Come play jacks with us," he said. "Do not spend your last days by yourself."

"Yeah, alright." Arthur shut the book and followed after Francis, abruptly remembering when he had called Francis a girl, and Francis had only asked if he made a pretty one.

"…and remember to say please and thank you, and don't start any fights—I mean it Arthur, no fighting—and write Mummy when you get there, and—" Daffyd adjusted Arthur's scarf as he lectured.

"I _know_, Daff, I'm not a moron," he said crossly.

"Golly, it's not going to be the same without you!" Henry said, leaning forward on his toes. They were gathered on the porch to say goodbye, and the bus that had brought them all here was waiting on the street to take Arthur and one other boy—Simon Sitwell—to Heathrow Airport.

"I will light a candle for you, if I had one," Francis said.

"Would," Arthur corrected automatically. He didn't know what it was with Catholics and candles, but he remembered Francis pleading with Miss Edmonds to have one of their allotted candles to burn on the window sill. She had steadfastly refused, and Arthur thought Francis might cry about it.

"I would," Francis said.

Daffyd finished telling Arthur all the things to do and not do, and stepped back. Arthur looked at the three of them, Henry who'd shot up two inches over the summer, Daffyd who had spent every day of Arthur's life with him, and Francis, who looked so terribly breakable out under the dark clouds, but so uniquely lovely.

"Right. Well, you all behave without me," Arthur said. He thrust his hand out to Henry, and they shook, and then he did the same with Daffyd. Daffyd squeezed his hand a little, and waved goodbye as Arthur grabbed his suitcase and started hauling it to the bus. Mr. Martin, the groundskeeper, came over to take it for him. Henry waved, then trotted back inside to find something else to do.

"Let me grab that for you, lad," Mr. Martin said, hustling it into the bus. Daffyd followed him to the bus, and Arthur grabbed onto the side of the door to pull himself in, then halted.

"Wait," he said to Miss Bailey, who was there to see him off. "I forgot." He jumped back down and ran back to the porch to throw himself at Francis.

"I will miss you," Francis said, hugging Arthur.

"Kick their arses at football," Arthur told him. Francis squeezed him tighter, and kissed his cheek when he pulled away. The boy's eyes were glassy and Arthur could tell from the signature tremble of Francis' lower lip that he was going to cry. "And take this." He took his only handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it over. "You need it more than I do."

"Soit courageux!" Francis called after him as he went back to the van, clutching the handkerchief. He didn't need to know French to get the message: Be brave.

"He's so odd," he told Ms. Bailey as she helped him into the van. "Why did he kiss me?"

"The French kiss their friends on both cheeks when they say hello and goodbye," Ms. Bailey explained. "It's just a custom."

Arthur didn't point out that Francis had only kissed him once.

He and Daffyd waved goodbye again, and he watched his brother go back into the house. Simon sat in the front, and Arthur pressed his face against the window until Robinson House was out of his view.

"Next stop, Heathrow!" Mr. Martin announced as they bounced down the road. He had a thick brogue that Arthur had always found amusing, but it didn't make him smile now. He wanted to say he'd forgotten something else, and have another reason to run back to what was familiar, but he was out of them, and Francis' words echoed in his mind. _Soit courageux._ If Francis were here, he would have to be brave for him. Maybe if he just imagined that were the case, he could manage.

_Don't worry Francis, we're just going to have a long drive to Heathrow Airport_, he thought. _And then we'll wait in the terminal until they call us. Miss White says unaccompanied minors get called first for every flight! _

The imaginary Francis was soothed by his words, and Arthur leaned his cheek against the cold window, closing his eyes, and trying to imagine what his American family, the Joneses, would be like.

Francis stayed watching the bus until it had crested a hill and gone out of his view, and then he continued to stand out on the porch. He wrapped his arm around one of the posts, and carefully leaned his cheek against the rough wood, tears following well-used paths down his face. He wanted to wail, and fall to his knees, and beat his fists against the floor. He wanted someone, anyone, to understand how much he _hurt. _

All at once it was too much to bear, and he ran from the porch, not knowing where he was going. He ran until his throat began to hurt, which was not too far, and he had reached an old cove of bushes, with a diseased tree stump he might sit on. And then he sobbed pitifully, doubled over, arms folded on his knees, his head buried in them. There was a wedge in his heart, prying the two halves apart, and he was going to die of it, he was sure. Nothing that hurt so much could leave him alive.

Daffyd had not seen Francis come in, and was the first to guess he never had. He went out to the porch, but he was gone. From here, Daffyd could see the copse of bushes, and thought he might at least go have a look, for Arthur's sake. By the time he arrived, Francis was too exhausted to cry anymore, and for all his weeping, the pain in his heart was not in the least alleviated.

Daffyd thought this war had put him into contact with far too many uncomfortable situations. Nevertheless, he spoke.

"He's going to be fine," he said. "Arthur's a tough nut. He'll be okay." Francis didn't move or respond, and Daffyd wondered if he was being ignored. A sharp wind blew, making Daffyd shiver. He had looked in the mirror the other morning, and realized he could see his collarbone, which had never been true before. He shoved his hands into his pockets. Slowly Francis unfurled, and wiped at his flushed cheeks and puffy eyes.

"I know," he said in a hoarse whisper, hugging his sides. "Arthur is strong. He will be okay. It's me I don't think will be okay."

The plane touched down in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. That was where Arthur had to say goodbye to Simon, who had another domestic flight to catch down to Oklahoma. Arthur hesitantly followed the signs, and the crowd, through the airport to the baggage claim. People surged around him and someone ran into his case when he set it down.

"Watch where you're going boy," a man's gruff voice said as he pushed past.

"Sorry, sir," he apologized in a mumble, hurrying off to stand against a wall in hopes he'd be out of the way while he tried to sort himself out. He tugged anxiously at his label, once again pinned to the front of his coat. He knew the family he was looking for was comprised of Mr. and Mrs. Jones, and their young son, but he had no idea what they looked like. Ms. White had said they would find him by his label, but what if he was too short? He was lost in a sea of black and gray, with no sign of who might be waiting for a lost English boy.

As people grabbed their luggage and the crowd began to thin, he saw a woman with skin like light teak, and blonde pin curls, wearing a yellow and white checkered dress. By her side was a young boy with a cowlick that stood straight up. His mother was looking at Arthur, and then they started over.

"You're Arthur Kirkland?" the woman asked, a gentle rolling accent on her lips. She crouched a little, to be nearer to his level. Her voice was kind, and she had gentle brown eyes. He looked down at his label.

"Yes, that's me," he said.

"I'm Mrs. Jones," she said. "And this is my son, Alfred."

"It's nice to meet you," he said, ducking his head. "Thank you very much for taking me in."

"Jeepers, you really do sound different! Like somebody in the movies!" the little boy piped up with a grin, showing a big gap where he was missing both front teeth. "I'm Alfred!" Arthur kicked himself into action and thrust out his hand, with Alfred shook with both of his, and with such vigor Arthur thought he might be trying to tear his hand off his wrist. "This is so great, we're going to get along just great! We'll play together and I'll show you around school and you can in time for Christmas too!"

Arthur wanted to say this wasn't great at all, and what would be great would be if he could get right back on that plane and go home and find Daffyd and Mairead and Ian and Mummy and Dad all waiting for him in London. But he knew that would be rude and Alfred was trying to be nice so he just said, "It's nice to meet you too."

"Come on Alfie, I'm sure Arthur's very tired from his flight," Mrs. Jones said. "Do you want me to take your suitcase, Arthur?"

"That's alright, Mrs. Jones, I can carry it," he said, not wanting to trouble her.

"Well let me know if you want some help," she said. He nodded, and she began to lead them off.

"We live close by too!" Alfred said happily. He trotted along beside Arthur, moving so quickly that he outpaced Arthur, Mrs. Jones, and then doubled back for Arthur before his mother had reached his turning point. It was as though someone had taken the energy of the sun, and compressed it all into one being: the boy beside Arthur. "We live in Leighton, that's less than two hours from here!"

"That's _close?_" Arthur asked.

"Yeah!" Alfred chirped, not seeming to notice Arthur's tone at all. "You're in Pennsylvania, you know? I can say Pennsylvania but I can't spell it. I got it wrong on a spelling test on Friday. I'm not very good at spelling. Can you spell 'Pennsylvania'?"

"I've never had to, but probably," Arthur said, wondering how any human being could talk as fast as Alfred.

"Wow, that's neat! Are you good at spelling?" Alfred asked.

"Yes, spelling is easy," Arthur said.

"I'm not. Can you spell 'grandmother'?"

"Grandmother is easy," Arthur said, thinking maybe Alfred was an idiot. "It's exactly the way it sounds."

"I got that one wrong too," Alfred said, apparently unabashed by his failures. "I got the 'A' and the 'O' mixed up, and the 'T' and the 'H'. I don't like spelling. But I'm pretty good at math. Are you good at math?"

"I'm alright," Arthur said. How was it that he had just escaped one aggressively friendly young boy, and now got saddled with another?

"If you have any math homework you need help with, I'd be glad to give you a hand!" Alfred offered, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he walked.

"I'm older than you, my homework will be harder," he said bluntly.

"Say, how old are you? Mom said they said you were between ten and thirteen, is that it?" Alfred blew right by Arthur's somewhat reprimanding tone.

"I'm eleven," he replied, wishing he'd allowed Mrs. Jones to take his suitcase.

"Hey, can you guess how old I am?"

"Eight," Arthur said at once. Alfred gaped in gap-toothed amazement.

"How'd you know?"

"Because I knew a boy back in Britain who was eight, and he was just like you," Arthur said. Alfred continued to prattle on the whole way to the car. It didn't seem to matter if he was listening: if he went too long without answering, Alfred just moved onto a new topic. Outside, it was cold and raining.

"Alfred, dear, why don't you give Arthur a break, hm?" Arthur felt even more grateful to Mrs. Jones as they got into the car. Surprisingly, Alfred complied, until he found another question.

"Is your daddy fighting in the war?" Arthur didn't look away from the window.

"He did, in the beginning."

"Mine is," Alfred said, his voice as level as Arthur had heard it yet. "He left last spring, he's fighting Japs in the South Pacific!"

"Alfred, don't say that word," intoned Mrs. Jones from the front of the car.

"Sorry," he said guiltily. "Jonny at school—"

"I don't want to hear what Johnny at school says," she replied. "If Johnny jumped off a bridge, would you?"

"No, mom," Alfred answered dutifully. He fell asleep after another twenty minutes, and Arthur found himself growing sleepy again. He'd slept on the plane, so he wasn't able to pass out entirely, but he drifted.

_This is Pennsylvania, Francis,_ he thought. _So far it's very rainy. And cold. But it is November, so maybe in the spring it will be warmer. I don't know if we'll be here until spring. If we are, we'll just have to make the best of it. You can do that, can't you?_

Alfred started to wake up as they pulled into a suburban neighborhood.

"Do you play football?" he asked Arthur, who perked up unexpectedly.

"You play football?" he asked. "They said Americans didn't play!"

"Yeah I play football!" Alfred grinned ear-to-ear. "It's my favorite sport, except baseball! My dad used to play with me all the time! We can go down to the park and play when the weather clears up!"

"That would be fun," Arthur said thoughtfully. Maybe something familiar would make him feel better.

"We have you up in Alfred's room," Mrs. Jones explained, pulling Arthur's suitcase out for him in the drive of a little blue home. There was bright green grass around it and two beds of flowers on either side of the front door, lovingly tended. There was also a red rubber ball sitting in the yard, weeping tears of rain.

"There's a camp bed!" Alfred said, leaping down onto the driveway. "Come on up, I'll show you my toys!"

"Alfred, don't you slam that door!" Mrs. Jones shouted after him as her son burst through the front door and pounded up the steps. Arthur followed more sedately, throwing an apologetic look at Mrs. Jones.

Alfred's room was dark blue with a white trim. His bed was nestled into a corner, and things had been moved out of the way to make room for a foldable camp bed set up for Arthur.

"This is my space mobile!" Alfred said, throwing himself onto the bed, bouncing into a kneeling position. He pointed up at a mobile of planets hanging over the bed. "And this is my baseball glove!" He grabbed a misshapen hunk of leather off the bedside table. "OH! And this is my comic book collection!" He jumped off the bed and pulled a box out from underneath, showing Arthur what looked to be many magazines.

Mrs. Jones appeared in the doorway and set Arthur's suitcase down by his bed. "Don't let him wear you out," she said to Arthur. "He's been very excited to have you, but if you get tired you just tell him to go entertain himself, okay? We'll have dinner at five-thirty." Arthur's eyes bugged in surprise for a moment. _So early!_ "Is that alright?"

"Yes, yes, that's fine," he said hastily, embarrassed. "I'll just unpack my things."

"No, do that later," Alfred said. "Come read _Captain America_ with me!"

"Alfred," his mother said in a warning tone. "You have to let Arthur do what he wants. He's the guest, remember?"

"Yes, sorry," Alfred said, ducking his head with shame. He looked through the comic books himself while Arthur set his suitcase down on the camp bed and began to take out his things. "We cleared a drawer for you," he offered, looking at the pile of Arthur's clothes. He opened one of the drawers on the dresser across from the beds. "This one's yours."

"Thanks." Arthur began to put his things inside.

"You're pretty quiet, huh?" Alfred said on the floor at the end of his bed.

"I'm…tired," Arthur replied, lingering over the open drawer. "It was a long flight." Turning on his heel, he asked, "Where's the washroom?"

"What?"

"The washroom," he repeated with no success. He couldn't remember what the others had told him about which words were different in American English. "The room with a toilet," he said.

"Oh! Bathroom's down the hall," Alfred said, pointing. "You can put your toothbrush and stuff in there if you want."

Brushing that off, Arthur followed Alfred's instructions and shut himself inside. There was a shower and tub inside, and a fluffy white rug in front of the sink. It was a very nice sort of place, and Arthur wondered if all American homes were like this. He paced the room a few times and then sat on the edge of the tub.

_I've found my American family. Alfred is very talkative and I want to tell him to shut up, but I don't think his mother would be very happy. He is trying to be nice. I think he wants me to feel at home. But it's not, Francis, it's not home at all and I miss England so very much already. Is this how you felt when you came to Robinson House?_

He stayed on the edge of the tub, breathing steadily, until he felt better able to face the Joneses. Then he rinsed his face in the sink, dried it on the available towel, and went back out.

Dinner was chicken—real, honest to goodness chicken—with cornbread and mashed potatoes. Arthur nearly inhaled everything on his plate, and then eyed the dishes on the table, wondering if it was rude to help oneself to seconds before everyone else had finished their firsts. Alfred wasn't far behind him though, and reached right for the spoon in the mashed potatoes, so Arthur helped himself to more chicken.

"There's usually more chicken," Alfred explained through a mouthful of cornbread, "but they've been making us ration." Arthur didn't even answer; he was too busy eating.

"Alfred, no talking with your mouthful."

"Sorry, mom."

After dinner, Alfred went into the living room and turned on the radio. "_Little Orphan Annie_ is on soon," Mrs. Jones explained to Arthur, who was hovering around the table, unsure if he ought to help clear or go with Alfred. "You can go have a listen, I'll take care of the dishes." Arthur nodded and joined Alfred on the rug.

_Little Orphan Annie_ appeared to involve an inordinate amount of unsafe behavior for children and adult incompetence. And guns. But Alfred loved it, all the way until the narrator asked the children to tune in again next week for a new adventure with Annie.

"Bedtime now," Mrs. Jones said, taking a seat in one of the armchairs with some socks to darn. "Go brush your teeth."

As they got ready for bed, Arthur was worried Alfred was going to talk his ear off until morning, but Alfred quieted down quickly enough, and was snoring a half an hour after they'd turned off the lights.

Arthur curled up into a ball under the blankets, wondering what Daffyd and Francis were doing now. What time was it at Robinson House? What time was it in London? What was Ian doing? Was he at work? Was Dad reading the paper? Was Ms. White holding math class? Or were they all asleep?

There was a pain in Arthur's chest, and he felt his throat start to constrict. Rolling over so his back was to Alfred, he let a few tears slip free, and then firmly resolved himself that this wasn't going to solve anything. A few more tears rolled out anyway, and then he squeezed his eyes shut, and willed morning to come soon.

AN: If the coding isn't clear, Alfred's mom is mixed race (mom was White, dad was Black), so Alfred is too


	5. Chapter 5

On Arthur's first day at school, he learned he was something of a novelty for the American children, most of whom had never met anyone English before. At recess, a group of them crowded around him and kept asking him to pronounce different words, until he finally snapped at them that he wasn't a toy and they should all bugger off.

Annoyed and feeling the part of a spectacle, he took a seat on a bench in the shade of the school building. It was colder there, but it meant no one else was trying to hang out there. Alfred waved from the swing set with a group of third graders, and then jogged over to Arthur's bench.

"Hey! What are you doing sitting over here? You wanna come play with us? We were gonna play hide and seek." Arthur looked down at his shoes and shook his head.

"No, thanks." Alfred hesitated, but one could practically see him reciting his mother's instructions about giving Arthur space in his head.

"Okay. If you change your mind though, we'll be over here!" He ran off again, full of energy that Arthur couldn't fathom. Had he ever been so perky?

At lunch, he and Alfred both had sandwiches that Mrs. Jones had made for them. Arthur took his back to the same bench, and ate by himself. Alfred was over at one of the lunch tables, chatting animatedly with a big group of people. Vaguely, Arthur considered the possibility of going to join them, but his feet stayed firmly planted on the ground.

He was busy studying the chain-link fence around the playground when he realized someone had sat down next to him. He turned, prepared to tell Alfred he didn't have to come over here and help Arthur celebrate his pity party, when he saw that it was not Alfred, but a girl from his class. She had curly black hair and big green eyes, and round cheeks dressed in shades of pink. Her name was Rose, and she looked like a porcelain doll on the shelf of an avid collector, dusted daily and arranged pleasingly. She tended to dress like it too.

"I thought you might want some company," she said with her hands in her lap. "It looked a bit lonely over here."

"It wasn't," Arthur said. "If I go back over there, they'll only make me talk the whole time anyway." He nibbled on a dry carrot stick. Alfred had told him he used to get apples in his lunch, but now those were for Fridays or special days.

"They can be a little much sometimes," Rose said with a little laugh, and the beauty spot by her left eye winked. Weak winter sunlight bathed the playground as the first few students broke away from the lunch tables, drawn over to the wood and aluminum structures.

"Yeah," Arthur grunted, picking up another carrot stick.

"So are you from London?"

_Look at this, Francis. At least at Robinson House, no one cared about my life's story!_

"Yeah."

"That's pretty swell. I've never been to England." At least when Arthur didn't give more of a response than glancing over at her, she stopped asking questions. After a long period of silence, she offered him a slice of pear without a word. Arthur stared a moment, then took it. Ah, sweet, sweet fruit! How had he never fully appreciated the complexity of flavor in a pear? The lovely texture, with just enough crunch that it wasn't mushy, but not so much his teeth ached trying to bite through it? Rose set her little napkin of pear slices between them, and they took their time parsing out the rest.

"Thanks," Arthur said when they were done. "I can't remember the last time I had a pear." He licked at his lips, knowing how his mother would scold him, trying to clean up the last of the delicate fruit juice.

"Things are rationed in England too now, huh?" she said.

"Much worse," Arthur said. "It's impossible to get sugar now."

"I suppose it will be like that here too, if the war goes on," she mused, swinging her legs. "But, things were already bad in a lot of places because of the Depression…"

"Mhm…" Arthur nodded.

"You're not very talkative, are you?" Rose said with a smile. The stickiness of pear juice on her chin caught the sunlight with a shine.

"I'm thinking."

"About what?"

"England." _I suppose this makes two of us homesick now._

"It must be hard to be so far away from home," Rose sympathized. "I've never been out of America before." Arthur found this of little value; America, as he understood it, was as big as Eurasia.

"I was never out of Britain before the war," Arthur said. "I had a grandmother down in Wales though."

The bell rang before anything else could be said, and the children returned to class for the rest of the day.

Thursday after school, Alfred was bouncing along beside Arthur on the walk home, swinging his lunch pail, when he said, "Hey! It's sunny out today, we could go down to the park and play football if you like!" This drew a pause of consideration from Arthur.

"Yeah…that would be fun," he said. He was exhausted from all the new things assaulting him here Stateside; he'd be glad for something familiar and simple.

"Great! I'll get the stuff from the garage!" Alfred smiled like the boy on the toothpaste advertisement and they continued on their way. "Today in class Bobby Snitterman tried to fit a whole quarter up his nose and he almost got it but then Mrs. Schwartz saw him…"

Most days Alfred talked the majority of the way home. Arthur was still learning to tune him out, because most often, Alfred did not require a response to keep talking. His exuberant, often exaggerated voice was a tune for Arthur to daydream too, with his mental conversations and vivid imaginings of what was going on back home.

At the house, Mrs. Jones was fixing holes in Alfred's clothes, which seemed to sprout up like dandelions in spring. Alfred stopped only long enough to sling his books onto the floor in the living room, and then Alfred vanished into the garage to get the ball.

"How was school?" Mrs. Jones asked Arthur as he loitered around the den, waiting for Alfred's return.

"It was alright," he said, taking care of his speech to his host, as always. "There aren't very many English people in America, are there?"

"Oh I'd say there's lots of 'em," Mrs. Jones disagreed gently. "Just not very many who still have the accent." She smiled. "You're one of a kind for them." Arthur frowned, finding no good reply, but shying away from being rude by not responding at all. His relief came in the form of Alfred, banging in through the door with a bag slung over his shoulder.

"Troops out!" he shouted, pausing to run over and give his mother a quick hug. "We've got ball to play!" A smile spread across Arthur's face, and he followed Alfred out the door, letting it slam shut behind them as they ran down the street. Alfred waved to a few people on their way by, calling out, "Howdy, Mrs. Dubose!" and "Hey, Jerry!" as they passed. At the park, which wasn't much more than a big grassy field that perhaps aspired to park status in the embrace of the currently leafless trees that dotted the perimeter, but had not yet reached that level of cultivation. "Ready?" he asked Arthur as he dumped the contents of the bag out—a sweater, a white ball with red stitching, what looked to be a lumpy hunk of leather folded in on itself, and an oddly shaped brown ball.

"You forgot the ball?" Arthur asked, raising his gaze from the sporty mess to Alfred. "How could you forget the ball?"

"I didn't forget it! It's right here, ya nimrod," Alfred said, who had heard the word on a radio program several months back and had still not gotten over being tickled every time he heard it. His mother had changed the station. He picked up the egg-like ball. "It's not a real one," he said with a frown. "That's my dad's…but I can't fit my hand on it good enough to throw, I'm too little." His frown deepened, his forehead furrowed in solemnity. "But I'll get there. Go down that-a way, I'll throw it to you!" He pointed.

"That's not a football." Even as Arthur opened his mouth to object to this bastardization of his reality, this Alice in Wonderland country where nothing was quite as it ought to be, he told himself he ought to just let it go. But one may have observed up to this point that refraining from comment was not Arthur's best skill.

"'Course it is," Alfred said. "Ain't they got footballs in England? You said you played!"

"Footballs are round," Arthur objected, folding his arms. Now the argument carried the weight of his intelligence and reliability on it—he wasn't some fool who couldn't tell a football from—whatever that was! "And black and white!"

Alfred frowned as deeply as ever, his small brow wrought with furrows. "A soccer ball!" he shouted at once, throwing the egg ball down into the grass. Then he started to laugh his carefree laugh. "You're thinking of a soccer ball Artie!"

"What the _bloody hell_ is a soccer ball?" Arthur demanded, tightening his arms at the unpleasant sensation that he was being laughed at. Alfred gaped in shocked delight at the swear, and then laughed again.

"This is a football," he said, picking up the not-a-football from the grass. "You throw it and your teammates have to catch it and get it past the 100-yard line! If you're really good, you can make it spiral! A soccer ball is round and black and white and you kick it!" Clearly he was exceedingly pleased to be able to provide this complementary lesson to Arthur.

Frustrated, but unable to convey that all this was wrong, even if he had no proof, Arthur made another effort. "Well yes it _is, _but that's football!"

"Not here," Alfred said, tossing the egg ball from hand to hand until he dropped it. "Come on, play with me," he pleaded. "I'll teach you how, it'll be so much fun!" Bored, wanting a good run in the grass, and without the tools to win the argument, Arthur caved. He was not won over by American football, but by the time they trooped home for dinner with Mrs. Jones, he was glad they had gone anyway.

Sometimes, he reflected back to Francis, it was important to have fun.

More fun came in the form of Christmas merriment: a letter from Alfred's father, and an invitation to Rose Jackson's family Christmas party.

There's a curious thing when a tumultuous upheaval occurs in one's life for the first time—or perhaps even for the ninety-ninth time—most particularly when one is a child. That is, the powerful sense that everything has changed for all time and nothing can ever return to its previous state because of this upheaval. This feeling had been pervasive in Arthur's mind since the news of his imminent exile to the United States. And after all, how _could_ anything go back to the way it had been, when so much bad had happened?

"Soit corageux," Francis urged him.

"The sun will shine out again," Samwise Gamgee told him from Arthur's recollection of _Lord of the Rings_. "And it will shine out all the clearer!"

So it was to his bewildered shock that he found he had begun to settle in with the Joneses. Life fell into an altogether foreign, yet increasingly familiar routine. Mornings, with cold cereal (or on weekends, "grits") and Alfred's mother hollering for him not to slam the door. The walk to school. Class with Rose and George and Max and Dorothy. The walk home. Dinner with something called "collard greens", followed by radio programs. Entirely, Arthur was gripped by the life-altering realization that the Joneses, in their own normalcy, were just like his own family. The only thing that continued to strike him as truly otherworldly was how distant the war seemed, stretched out on battlefields an ocean away, no nearer to Alfred than the African front was to Arthur back in England.

Accompanying Arthur's new American rhythm was a closer inclusion in the Jones family, which included the regular reading aloud of Mr. Jones' letters from the Pacific.

Weekly, Alfred checked for letters from his father. If there was one, Mrs. Jones read it aloud to them on Sunday. She perched on the couch, giving her weary feet a rest, and the boys—for Arthur was immediately drawn into this ritual, without question—knelt on the rug to anticipate the words of the mythical Mr. Jones.

This week, as she read aloud the words, "I have been granted leave to come home for Christmas", Alfred screamed with excitement and flailed his arms somewhat akin to what Arthur had always imagined someone being electrocuted looked like.

"Daddy's coming home," he breathed, gripping his knees. "For real!" Mrs. Jones stared at the letter, taking a shaky breath through quivering lips.

"Yes dear, it looks that way." The next day, there was a batch of molasses cookies cooling on the counter when the boys got home from school. Joy all around the Jones household—save for the kernel of seething jealousy in Arthur's heart that made him feel at once righteously angry that he didn't get the same privilege of having his family together for the holidays, and desperately selfish, to begrudge Alfred his family.

The Rose matter was no less complicated. She approached Arthur about it in early December before class.

"Morning, Arthur," she said, while he sat at his desk reading a book from the small shelf beneath the window. Other kids were sprawled about, talking and throwing paper airplanes while they waited for the bell to ring.

"Hello, Rose." It took her third greeting before he heard her and looked up, apparently startled to see her. It made her giggle, but he couldn't imagine why. "What is it?"

"Like your book?" She wrapped a loose lock of black hair around her finger and gave it a tug.

"Huh? Uh-huh. It's good." It was _Robinson Crusoe_.

"Looking forward to Christmas?" she asked. Arthur shrugged, looking down at his desk, over to the floor, and then up at the blackboard. Decorations had started to appear around town, and already Alfred was needling his mother to get the Christmas tree early. There was nothing in the world to drag Alfred down now, with the knowledge that his father would be returning, not even being harassed in the schoolyard, which Arthur witnessed from his classroom window. By the time he got down to Alfred to investigate, the bullies were gone, and Alfred seemed hardly worse for wear. Certainly no less excited about the upcoming holidays. "I know you must miss home," Rose went on in a rush of breath, lacking an answer from Arthur, "and Mama says being alone on the holidays is the worst, so I thought you might want to come to my Christmas party!"

"What's that? A party?" Alfred, who on some mornings hung around Arthur's classroom to talk with other kids, perked up when he saw his English visitor being invited places. The look Rose threw in his direction, only partly turned his way, said plainly she wished he hadn't overheard.

"It's invite only," she said, attempting to walk a mature line between shutting Alfred down and not being mean. Being of a sixth grade maturity level, this proved exceedingly difficult.

"Well you can't invite Arthur and not me," Alfred said, wandering over. "We're a team!" Rose stared at him.

"You're a third-grader," she said. "You can't come to a sixth-grader party." It was the perfect out, the eternal age-restriction of children!

"I can too!" Alfred protested. "I can handle it! And if you invite Arthur, you've got to invite me!"

"She doesn't have to do anything," Arthur intervened at last, his gaze dimmed by annoyance as he lowered his book. "It's her party."

"But…" Unable to formulate an argument, or else afraid to prove Rose's point by whining, Alfred spun and left the classroom.

"I'll have to ask Mrs. Jones," Arthur said.

"That's fine!" Rose said, brightening in relief when the awkwardness was over. For Arthur, though, it had only just begun.

He knew when Alfred was quiet on the walk home that he had not forgotten about Rose's party, despite Arthur's best hopes for the distraction of the school day. The majority of the walk was spent kicking a seed pod along the road, eyes fixed down, refusing to look at Arthur, or speak to him. It might've been a whisper of the wind but Arthur was almost sure he heard "traitor" muttered at least once. Upon arrival at the house, he made for the kitchen where Mrs. Jones was already prepping for dinner.

"Mom-mom-mom!" He dropped his books and lunch pail and grabbed Mrs. Jones' dress. "Rose Jackson is having a party and she invited Arthur but not me! She can't do that, can she?" Not wanting to be involved, but inextricably so already, Arthur lingered with a foot on the bottom stair, listening.

Mrs. Jones sighed quietly and dried her hands on a dish towel.

"Well Alfred, it is her party, sweetie," she said.

"That's what Arthur said!" Alfred burst out in betrayal, flailing his fists at his side.

"Maybe she only wants it to be a big-kid party," Mrs. Jones suggested, tossing a handful of chopped onions into a pot.

"But I'm not little," Alfred protested desperately. "I'm eight!"

"Alfred, when you see the little six-year-olds at school, do they seem like little kids to you?" she asked, wiping her knife and picking up a skinned potato.

"Well yeah…" Alfred attempted to foresee where this line of questioning was going, and failed.

"So, to the eleven-year-olds, you're a little kid," she reasoned.

"But—!" Alfred's jaw worked furiously as he tried to come up with a good counter to a painfully logical argument.

"Alfie, why do you even want to go to this party?" his mother asked. "Is Rose a friend of yours?"

"No…"

"Do you want to spend the night with sixth graders?"

"…No…"

"Or do you just not want Arthur to go somewhere without you?"

Silence.

Mrs. Jones temporarily abandoned her chopping and crouched down in front of Alfred. "Alfred, do you remember how we talked about giving Arthur space? He's our guest—sometimes he may want to do things on his own."

"But this isn't on his own," Alfred argued. "It's with kids from school!"

"On his own, apart from you," Mrs. Jones clarified. "Besides, aren't you glad he's making friends? Isn't it good that he fits in? Don't you want him to feel at home here?" Alfred made a detailed study of his shoes and the old kitchen tiles.

"Yeah…"

"So. Arthur will go to the party, and you can stay here and listen to an extra radio program, how's that? And maybe if you ask nicely, Arthur will tell you about the party when he comes home," she said, straightening up. Alfred frowned at his feet, but when his mom went back to chopping vegetables for dinner, he eventually sulked off.

He started talking to Arthur again, but with considerably less enthusiasm. On Friday, Arthur received a bowl of sweet potato something-or-other from Mrs. Jones to take to the Jacksons' party. Arthur walked to the house and arrived punctually to find Rose and her older brother the only other kids currently at the party.

_Maybe I've come early_, Arthur thought. There were many adults mingling around the dining table and the living room, though. Arthur passed off his gift to Mrs. Jackson who took it graciously and put it on the table with the others, nestled among tall candlesticks with shining flames and glossy sprigs of holly.

Rose emerged from the kitchen in a gray and white checked dress, her hair in near braids. She beamed when she saw Arthur, her pink cheeks bright.

"Arthur! What did you bring?" she asked.

"Mrs. Jones made sweet potatoes," he said.

"Oh goodie. If I saw another casserole come in…" She laughed. "Do you want a look around?" she asked, when he did not leap to denigrate the noble casserole with her.

"Sure," he said.

Rose took him around the house ablaze with Christmas décor, from the white crown molding around the dark wood furniture to the twinkling lights overhead. Coils of tinsel danced a conga around the ornaments on the mantle, sprang down the branches of the tree, and shrugged around the bookshelves. Solitary candles stood watch in the windows, and beneath the tree, commanding the whole attention of the front room, Arthur could already see a few crisply-wrapped packages. He did not see sheets split down the middle, resewn at the edges, as he had heard Mrs. Jones discuss with Mrs. Dubose over the fence. He didn't see a patchwork of repairs on the Jacksons' clothes, and on the counter in the kitchen, there was a fresh, full dish of butter.

David Jackson—age 14—appeared in the doorway of the study to slingshot a piece of candy at Rose, with no more goal than basic sibling-baiting.

"You get out of here!" she cried, shaking a fist at him as he cackled. "Go kiss Aunt Myrtle!"

"I was just trying to share the candy," David said innocently.

"Out!" Rose seized the offending candy off the floor and hurled it vaguely in David's direction, so he danced out of the doorway with another laugh.

"Later, sis!"

Rose frowned. "I'm sorry about that," she apologized sincerely to Arthur, but he shook his head, trying to articulate his thoughts.

"It reminds me of my siblings," he managed after marshalling his considerations.

"You fight with them?" Rose asked, those picturesque green eyes widening. The thought of Arthur doing anything he wasn't supposed to seemed beyond her comprehension.

"Oh, all the time," Arthur assured her. "It's never quiet back home."

"Really?" Rose sat down on a creamy ottoman, which paired with a love seat. She gestured for Arthur to join her. "Did your mama get mad? Mine hates it when David and I fight."

"Of course, mums always hate fighting," Arthur said, taking a seat. "My mum says she can't hear herself think when we yell." Rose giggled.

"That's funny." She leaned over, apparently tickled.

"Francis said that fighting is just a sign you're passionate though," Arthur mused thoughtfully.

"Is Francis one of your brothers?" she asked.

"No!" Arthur's response was emphatic, almost offended on Francis' behalf. "He's…a friend I made…back in Britain." He had never explained before about Robinson House, and he didn't want to hear concerned questions or pitying expressions. Not now—not at a party.

"Are you still homesick? Or are you getting used to America?"

Arthur tipped his head from side to side. "Both, I suppose."

"I'd like to go to England someday," Rose said. "When this is all over. Maybe I'll see you there." She smiled amiably. Arthur opened his mouth to say probably not, it was a big country, only to remember that wouldn't mean nearly anything to an American, possessed of a third of a continent. It turned out it didn't matter much anyway, because Rose wasn't waiting for a response—she was waiting for a chance to kiss him.

It couldn't have taken Arthur more aback than if a train had crashed through the wall. He just sat there like a dolt, thinking that his books had not prepared him for this at all. Finally, something snapped and his wits came rushing back, jabbing at him to pay attention. At once, he shoved Rose away and he heard her squeak as she crashed off the ottoman onto the floor.

"What's the matter with you?" she exclaimed, indignant and flushed. Arthur bolted to his feet like a compressed spring.

"Me? What's wrong with _you_?" Arthur's cheeks burned with high color and his fists clenched agitatedly at his sides. His lips felt wet from Rose's kiss. "You can't just—_assail_ people like that!" Rose's dark brow furrowed at Arthur's word choice.

"It was just a kiss!" she defended herself, fading into bemused injury, and from there leaping on the defensive. "You're acting crazy!"

"I never said you could kiss me!"

"But—no one asks—"

"I don't want to kiss you!" The thought of hurting Rose's feelings was nowhere in Arthur's mind; his only consideration was making sure this never happened again—thus, clarity was paramount. The color in Rose's doll-like face deepened at the perceived insult.

"Then just go, if you're having such a bad time!" In her tone, the attempt to wound was clear.

"I will!" Arthur declared, realizing there was nothing he'd like more.

"Then go!" Rose covered her mouth, still splayed on the rug, as Arthur fled the room, wiping his lips. Without even thanking Mrs. Jackson, he quit the party and walked back to the Joneses'. Embarrassment—nigh humiliation—seared his breast.

Mrs. Jones had offered to drive him before, since he was unfamiliar with the neighborhood, but, not wanting to inconvenience her, he had insisted on walking. Now he was glad he had refused, for retracing his steps through the warm, swampy darkness, lit by the glow of passing windows and the occasional street lamp gave him time to breath and reflect on the party.

Clearly, Rose was nuts. But, Arthur pondered, was it possible he had overlooked or misread her signals? No—that had come out of nowhere. Rose was totally out of order. Sweat beaded on Arthur's lip as he made his way at a clip down the sidewalk. The weather of North Carolina was yet another mystery of America to Arthur—he had never been anyplace so warm at Christmastime.

As he reached for the front door, he remembered Alfred's sulking and groaned. Inside, he saw the living room had been transformed into a lumpy sea of blankets, propped up by unseen furniture. Confused, he looked over to the kitchen, where Mrs. Jones was going over bills and listening to Ella Fitzgerald croon out Christmas songs.

"You're home early," she remarked in surprise when she saw home. Arthur wandered through the doorway.

'Yes," he said, sliding his hands into his pockets.

"How was the party?" she asked. Arthur shrugged again.

"It was alright."

"Alfred's in the living room," she said. Arthur nodded and took his leave. When he looked out again at the blanket fort, Alfred's face was peering out.

"You want to come in?" he asked after a long pause.

"Sure," Arthur said, halting outside the "entrance". He crouched down.

"There's a password," Alfred told him. Arthur's brows pulled together.

"How can I know what the password is if you made it up while I wasn't here?" he asked. This paradox was not something Alfred had considered, and he spent a long moment processing it before deciding that his desire for company in the one-man fort outweighed the sanctity of password rules.

"Sixth graders are jerks," he said. It took a moment for Arthur to understand that this was the password, and not an out-of-place comment on his own behavior. A wry smile tugged at his thin lips.

"Sixth graders are jerks," he said. Alfred dove into the sheltered depths, allowing Arthur to lift up the blanket flap and crawl in, still in his party attire. Comic books carpeted the floor like daisies in spring, poking out from under blankets and pillows.

"Want a Captain America?" Alfred resumed what had clearly been his earlier nest, drawing a bedsheet over his lap.

"Sure." Arthur took the proffered comic with no intention of reading it, and lay back, propping socked feet up on the edge of the couch. In the quiet that followed, Alfred appeared to be reading his comic book, but this was a cover for preparing to ask the question they were both waiting for.

"How was the party?...Did you have fun?"

"…kind of terrible, actually," Arthur said candidly. "It was still going when I left." He debated telling Alfred about the kiss, but there was still unease in his gut about it, so he held back.

"Really?" Alfred's face glowed with poorly-disguised delight—Arthur couldn't have brought back better news.

"Yeah. I think I was the only one from school that Rose invited." Arthur's puggish nose wrinkled. "She was weird about it."

"Girls are weird," Alfred said, hoping for more wonderfully deriding news about Rose and her exclusive Christmas party.

"Yeah." Arthur was apparently not in the business of providing such desirable gossip.

"Well, we'll have more fun here!" Alfred declared. "We can pretend we're camping and tell ghost stories and stay up late!"

"Do you _know_ any ghost stories?" Arthur asked.

"Duh! But you have to go put on your PJs first! No one camps in a button-down!" Rolling his eyes a little, Arthur exited the fort to comply.

The rest of the night was spent in the homemade fort, with Arthur trying to decide if Alfred was more fascinated or terrified by the ghost stories. Safe in their sanctuary, they were able to pretend, if only for an evening, that spooks and boogey men were the worst things they had to fear, and that evil could be defeated with a surge of courage and a wooden stake or a silver bullet.

When Arthur dropped off to sleep on the Joneses' living room floor, he dreamed of more pleasant kisses. Not from Rose, but from a lovely blonde whose face he could never quite see, but whom he felt a powerful draw towards. In the morning, he woke feeling at once comforted and possessed of a hollow longing he couldn't name, an age-old pain beginning to blossom in his heart, handed down memory by memory from those who had already suffered its curse.

That day, Mrs. Jones unpacked the Christmas decorations, and they helped arrange them. This involved a lot of Bing Crosby, Alfred running around trailing tinsel off him like tentacles, and Mrs. Jones breaking to dance to the music. The chaos reminded Arthur of home, and he smiled as he took baubles out of their newspaper cradles to put them on the tree. A few friends and neighbors stopped by around lunchtime, and Mrs. Hansen brought her dog, whom Alfred gladly entertained in the yard while his mother socialized.

All was well and merry until Alfred look out the window and hissed.

"Anna!"

The bell rang again, and Mrs. Jones gave Alfred a look before opening the door.

"Mrs. Braginskaya," she greeted the woman at the door warmly. Alfred peered out in a squint from behind his mother. Accompanying the plump woman in red and white was a little girl with silvery blonde hair past her waist, in a black dress with a white-trimmed collar. Her face appeared impassive, but she gave herself away with a look at Alfred. As the mothers conversed and exchanged holiday treats, the two children glared.

"Say goodbye, Anya," Mrs. Braginskaya told her told her daughter, putting a hand on her back.

"Goodbye, Mrs. Jones," Anna said graciously, giving a little curtsy. As they turned to go, she took her last chance to offer grievous insult to Alfred, and stuck her tongue out at him.

He gave a strangled noise of offended disbelief, but Mrs. Jones shut the door, cutting off his chance for retaliation.

"Did you see that?" he demanded of his mother. "She stuck her tongue out at me!"

"I saw," Mrs. Jones replied, her lips twitching in amusement.

"Ooh! I'm going to get her back!" Alfred threatened, shaking a small fist.

"You'll do no such thing, Alfred F. Jones," she said. "Go get the red tablecloth." Squinting again, Alfred grumbled off to do as he was bade.

In another week, something even more thrilling than the start of Christmas break from school occurred: Mr. Jones came home.

Alfred and Arthur were on the way home with the neighbor boy Jerry when they arrived at the house to hear a distinctly male voice in the kitchen. Alfred dropped his football and screamed.

"Daddy!" Very nearly leaving a cloud of dust in his wake, Alfred seemed to simply blink out of being on the doorstep and reappear in the kitchen. Arthur heard the rumble of Mr. Jones' greeting, but rather than join the reunited family, he crept upstairs to his and Alfred's room. The sense that he was intruding on other people's lives had never been stronger, and he thought persistently of Robinson House, where they had all been exiled together.

Arthur liked to believe he was not a lonely type of boy—he rejoiced in solitude and was never more at peace than secreted alone with a book. So why was it now so unpleasant? No brothers or sister to tease him, no mum telling him to go do chores, no Francis bothering him, no groups of boisterous boys disturbing him. Not even Alfred nagging him to go play. Alone had never felt like such a sharp pain between his ribs.

His mind persisted in trying to determine the difference between being alone at home and being alone here or even at Robinson House. He was still distracting himself with these contemplations on the camp bed when Alfred bellowed up, "Hey, Arthur! Come meet my dad!"

With the strong feeling this was a courtesy offer, Arthur guiltlessly ignored him. So it thus came as a great surprise when Mrs. Jones' head appeared in the doorway a few minutes later, stray curls stringing down her cheeks.

"Arthur," she said in a gentler tone than her son, "do you want to come down with us? We've decided to have a cookie early. And I know Mr. Jones would like to meet you."

"Me?" She took him by surprise again, throwing off his planned polite rejection.

"Yes," she replied. "Alfred's written him about you." Arthur remembered his name coming up once or twice in Mr. Jones' letters, but that had never registered that Mr. Jones saw him—Arthur—as a part of his family's life back in America.

"Oh. Er. Okay. Yes—I'll come down." He certainly wasn't going to be _rude_ on such an occasion!

"Great!" Mrs. Jones' smile was soft, but there was a glow in her of a joy that could not be contained. Arthur followed her downstairs and into the kitchen, where Alfred was zipping around his father, talking so fast his words collided and tripped over themselves and even Alfred seemed to get confused at times.

Arthur halted in the doorway, but Mrs. Jones sailed ahead to place a plate of sugar cookies on the table. Mr. Jones, Arthur thought, was the most "all-American" man Uncle Same had ever produced. He was tall, with squared shoulders, resplendent even in his lieutenant's uniform, with a jawline that in itself might've qualified as a weapon, and positively atomic blue eyes. Thick blond hair fell in waves, soft and freshly regrown from the army shave. In perfect honesty, his looks felt like an assault they were so striking. His time in the Pacific had tanned his skin to a warm golden brown tone like Alfred's natural color.

It reminded Arthur of the time he'd spent standing in front of the mirror before his bath a few days ago, peering in the mirror. He kept trying to see that he had matured somehow, but if anything, he felt gawkier and more awkward-looking than when the war had begun—his cheeks were losing the charming fullness of childhood, making his face more angular, and despite mummy's best assurances, he did not seem to have grown into his heavy brow at all. He was all sharp edges and points—elbows, knees, shoulders, ribs. If he bent over and turned at the right angle in the mirror he could see the ridges of his spine. Was that normal? He didn't know.

North Carolina hadn't brought any tanning or warmth of skin tone to Arthur—he still looked like a creature of the night, with errant pink blotches here and there, like on his cheeks or kneecaps. He was so absorbed in these other things he didn't have time to worry about the coarse nest of straw-blond hair crowning his odd head.

He thought of the other boys—or he had that day, before someone far more interesting had stood before him—Daffyd and Roger and Francis. Did they look different now? He tried to imagine Francis looking as coltish and unfortunate as he did, and it was impossible. Francis had been older than he was now when they'd first met—maybe he was already past this stage? If so, it could be that a mere year would clear up Arthur's problems too!

"Ah—you must be Arthur!" The golden man was speaking to him and he realized he ought to answer if he was still intent on not being rude.

"Yes! That's me. Arthur." He should never have even bothered coming downstairs.

"A pleasure to meet you." Mr. Jones strolled over and thrust out a calloused hand, which Arthur shook feebly, remembering only halfway through to put some effort into his grip. Dad always said you could tell the kind of person a man was from his handshake.

"How've you been settling in? Alfred sharing alright?" Mr. Jones' accent was just as heavy as his wife's, a charming slow roll to his words that sounded wonderfully foreign.

"Oh yes, yes," Arthur babbled.

"Good to hear!" They all seated themselves around the table and continued talking. Alfred was determined to tell his father absolutely everything that had happened since he was last home. He surrendered this goal only to hear the stories Mr. Jones had brought back from the Pacific, tales more vivid and electrifying than in his letters (and with no parts blacked out).

In Alfred's reflective eyes, consuming half his awed face, Arthur could almost see the poisonously green palm leaves, dripping with humidity (worse than here, Mr. Jones said! As if such a thing were possible!), sheltering the wet dirt and elephantine bugs below. In the distance, he heard the buzz of fist-sized flies, and the shouts of the Japanese—a language Arthur himself had never occasioned to hear. He could taste his own sweat, and the salt of the tropical air, could feel the chaffing pack pressing his damp clothes to his back.

Wet, wet, wet, Mr. Jones described it. Everything was soaked, dripping, oozing, wrung out. If he had two words for the battlefield of the South Pacific, they would be thus: hot, and wet.

Owing to the unique circumstance of Mr. Jones' return, Alfred stayed up an extra hour and twenty minutes: An hour because Mrs. Jones allowed it, and twenty minutes because he spent that time trying to argue for more.

From there, the days seemed to skip by and by until they were crowded 'round the tree on Christmas morning, Alfred near to leaping out of his own earthly skin with excitement. After ripping through a few presents, and passing a few off to mom and dad, Alfred examined one label a little closer and said, "It's for Arthur!" He handed it promptly off and waited expectantly for Arthur to open it. "Santa must know you're here!"

When he had laid off blinking in surprise—and trying to deny himself his longing for the once-expected holiday gifts—Arthur tore it open, exposing a new notebook and a set of pencils tied together with a scrap of ribbon.

"Oh look at that," Mrs. Jones remarked. "You can write down your thoughts now!"

In addition to the notebook, he received a new used pair of trousers for school and some socks. When Arthur was alone with Mrs. Jones in the kitchen later, he wanted to find a way to tell her that he was grateful—he suspected his gifts had more to do with her than Santa Clause. He tried, but stood wordless in front of her, until she reached out to him and he lurched forward into the embrace, just for a hasty moment before pulling back.

"Thank you!"

There was no magical, climactically improbably snow that night, but there were cookies and Christmas music and the peaceful shield of love so present in the Jones family home. And although Arthur wondered briefly, laying on his camp bed that night, Alfred out like a light hugging his new baseball glove, what his family was doing, he had the dim, placid sense they were doing something pleasant. Maybe there was a fire in the hearth, and Mairead was telling a story, while mum darned some of dad and Iain's socks. At Robinson House, maybe Daffyd was having a laugh with friends, and Francis had gotten a letter from home, or at least been allowed to light his candle.

Perhaps, for a night, things were alright—not good, but alright.


	6. Chapter 6

At the end of the holiday season—directly after New Years'—Mr. Jones left back to the front. Alfred and Mrs. Jones bid him goodbye on the front lawn, the former trying most nobly not to cry. Mr. Jones was kind enough not to remark when tears started sliding down Alfred's stoic cheeks anyway, in defiance of his efforts. Arthur got a handshake, and, for whatever reason, chose not to relay this to his imaginary Francis.

For a day or two, Alfred was noticeably depressed, but then, as it had after Arthur's arrival, life picked up its rhythm and began to roll on.

Arthur could tell the novelty of housing a war refugee was waning for Alfred—he didn't brag about it anymore, and he less frequently insisted that he and Arthur had to do things together. His constant good mood and ready acquiescence to Arthur's suggestions were nearing their end—if Arthur had to put a name to it, Alfred was starting to act like his brother.

And anyone who has ever had, or known someone with a sibling, knows that sibling relations never come without fights.

In many ways, such disagreements were even more prone to rise in a situation like this, because Alfred and Arthur lacked such separation as would be present if Arthur was a permanent resident in the Jones household. They shared everything, because Arthur had nothing. The valise he had carried with him from the UK contained just his supply of clothes—rapidly becoming too small and worn for habitation—and a few miscellaneous things: a couple books, some tired toiletries and a few frequently-folded letters from home.

Perhaps because Arthur felt so intrusive and embarrassed about sharing everything with Alfred, he ignored how it had begun to grate the young boy, and furthermore, he responded belligerently to complaints from the affected party. This combination led to the current state of affairs, wherein Alfred was utterly ready to go to war over his right not to share the blanket Arthur was using to shelter his feet while he scribbled away in the notebook he'd gotten for Christmas months ago.

"It's mine," Alfred argued, with some perception that repeating the claim yet again would win Arthur to his viewpoint. It did not.

"You're not even using it," Arthur repeated, with the same logic.

"I was _going_ to!"

"You were not, you liar," Arthur scoffed

"Stop hogging it!"

"_I'm_ hogging it? You're hogging it!"

"Well I need it now, so I'm taking it!" Alfred grabbed the blanket and all-too-happily jerked it off Arthur's legs.

"_Hey!_" The material object of the blanket was long forgotten—the principle was the thing now. Arthur seized hold of the fabric and yanked back. "You can't use it now, I'm using it!"

"You said I couldn't have it because I wasn't using it—well now I am!" Alfred announced.

"You can't have it because I'm using it!"

"All you're doing is covering your dumb feet!"

"Oh well—I'm still using it!" Arthur's pull nearly toppled Alfred over.

"I'm going to use it better!" Alfred bounced off the couch, hit the ground, and began trying to drag Arthur off his seat.

"Let go!"

"You let go!" Just as Alfred closed his hand around victory, Arthur rolling to the edge of the couch, Mrs. Jones looked into to see what "in God's name" was going on.

"Arthur was hogging the blanket!" Alfred accused at once.

"Alfred, did you take that from him?" Mrs. Jones demanded over Arthur's indignant "I was _not!_"

"He wouldn't _share_." Alfred's tone turned sulky, hearing an absence of support in his mother's tone.

"Wouldn't share, or wouldn't give you what you wanted?" The cavalry was not coming in for Alfred today. He refused to meet her gaze. "Pardon us, Arthur," Mrs. Jones said in a dangerous tone, liberally coated in sugar. A hand clamped down on Alfred's shoulder to guide him out of the room for a more thorough scolding.

"No!" This time, he refused to go quietly for his tongue-lashing, another strike against him. "You're going to yell at me and it's not fair!" His voice climbed in pitch and wobbled. "It's _my_ blanket and Arthur's _hogging_ it!"

Arthur, who slept in Alfred's room and played with Alfred's toys and sometimes, hung out with Alfred's friends, was so thoroughly mortified by this situation he might never use a blanket again.

"It's not fair!" Alfred cried out again, tears starting to bubble to the surface. "I have to share _everything_, nothing is mine anymore!" Mrs. Jones closed her eyes a moment, then nudged Alfred towards the kitchen, currently as welcoming as a medieval interrogation chamber.

"Come on Alfie, it's time for a talk." Having presented his argument and evidence and (perhaps?) seen a softening of the jury, Alfred bowed his head and followed direction.

Since the opposition had forcibly vacated, Arthur plucked the blanket up off the ground and replaced it over his feet. It was comfortable, but the air was still weighted with his and Alfred's fight. Enough to distract Arthur from his writing. He debated leaving to avoid Alfred's mandated apology, which he was sure was coming, but then found himself becoming angry afresh_. It's not like I wouldn't go home if I could!_ At the moment, given the choice, he'd have gladly returned to bombed-out London rather than stay here, no matter how much safer America was.

His internal back and forth about leaving the couch was still ongoing when Alfred returned.

"Sorry for being mean," he said, sitting back on the carpet. "I'm not used to having to share everything." Being an only child, Alfred had never even dealt with standard sibling squabbles. Reflecting on his new considerations of loneliness, Arthur wondered if this was why Alfred craved company like Arthur craved solitude—they each had an abundance of the other.

In response, he offered a grunt. "If you really want the bloody blanket—" He did cast an eye around to be sure Mrs. Jones hadn't heard the curse, "—take it." His tone was sullen, and he kicked the blanket off at Alfred.

"No, you take it," Alfred insisted magnanimously, putting it back on the couch.

"I don't want it anymore," Alfred said, flicking it off again.

"I don't either," Alfred declared, determined to take the higher road.

"Just take it!" Arthur returned, content with dragging Alfred off the aforementioned high road.

"You take it!" They paused, found hands knotted up in the blanket, both trying to figure out how to come out on the most righteous side of the conflict. Alfred saw it first.

"Fine, I'll take it." He took the blanket back and piled it on the floor between himself and the base of the couch, within Arthur's reach. One-upped by an eight-year-old! Even though Arthur refused to relay this information to Francis, he could hear him laughing.

It was not the last time Alfred and Arthur fought, but rather than pushing them apart, the momentary discords seemed to solve themselves. Alfred rarely had allowed Arthur's temper, dampened slightly by genuine attempts at politesse, but at heart unchanged, to bother him, and he grew bolder about raising issues, particularly over the summer, when they no longer had classes to keep them apart for several hours a day. But this acted more like a lance to a boil, releasing and draining toxins to prevent infection, rather than fire to a bridge.

Arthur found, as usual, that there were boons and pitfalls to summer break. For example, there was no more of Alfred agonizing over his English homework, and thinly disguising his homework questions as innocent queries to Arthur. However, without the distraction of math and spelling, Arthur found he had altogether too much free time to ponder the war, or do nothing at all. In absentia of London's many nooks and crannies to explore, and the handful of friends he had left behind, Arthur found himself spending long hours lying in the grass, or performing various cleaning tasks for Mrs. Jones. Alfred, despite appearing quite as bored at times, insisted it was better than school and had a good laugh and jeer every time he caught Arthur sweeping or doing dishes.

When Arthur was twelve and Alfred a month and a half into his ninth year, in late August, the tendrils of the seemingly distant war, heretofore only visible in Mr. Jones' passive absence and the slowly shrinking variety of foods on the table, seized the household like the tentacles of a Kraken.

The worst part, Arthur would recall until his hair was white and his hands spiderwebbed with veins, was that it all began so normally. And even when their wariness had been piqued, they had caught the scent of danger, there was nothing they could do but continue to execute their parts, rolling along like the grotesque semblance of a terrible, and wretchedly predictable play.

It was hot. So, so hot. Arthur had never conceived that such heat was possible, but he had thought that at the beginning of the summer, and each sweat-sodden North Carolina week seemed to set out with the goal of proving him wrong yet again. It wasn't until mid-July that Alfred and his mother even began to comment on the heat. Even so, Mrs. Jones and the other ladies continued to don their darned dresses, nobly sallying forth into hell's own kitchen to concoct jams for that winter, or into the yard to toil in air more liquid than gas on flower and vegetable patches in the throes of some vegetative equivalent of anemia, or Yellow Fever.

A rain that morning had brought some relief from the sweltering temperatures, but by early afternoon the household stood by and watched the water evaporate into clouds off streets, rooves and sidewalks. Not much later, when Mrs. Jones had finished balancing the household finances and was enjoying a brief respite with a cold glass of weak lemonade, Alfred, sitting by the window, languidly moving his army men about in a half-hearted battle, said, "Mama, there's somebody coming up the walk."

Mrs. Jones turned her head to the window, and was at once carved of stone. With such efforts as her limbs were weighted in rock, she set her glass down and rose up off the couch.

"Alfred, you go ahead and stay here," she said. Having risen too early, she was left to wait until they heard the knock on the front door, then promptly wrench it open. One hand grew white-knuckled on the doorway, the other clawed at the frame opposite. But her voice was composed when she spoke.

"How can I help you, sir?"

"Ma'am." The other voice was crisp but hoarse, gravelly. Arthur found himself struggling to listen, and, possibly catching a crinkle of paper, forced himself to stop, and go back to re-reading_ The Adventures of Tom Sawyer_ for the third time since his arrival (the school book selection was slim). "I offer you my deepest condolences."

Alfred was unrepentantly leaning around the corner, trying to understand the sight of his mother, gripping a letter in a shaking first, and the army officer on the step.

"He was a real fighter, Jones," the tone-deaf man went on, dead to the subtleties and depth of the situation. "Always—"

"He wasn't a fighter," Mrs. Jones interrupted, her voice rent with a barrage of emotion, none of it half-felt. "He was a _father._"

"Yes, of course." The officer retreated at once, peering past Mrs. Jones' polka-dotted hip to Alfred's face gripped with fearful confusion. She straightened to hide him from view.

"Thank you for your message, sir." It was a tone of Mrs. Jones' that Arthur never wanted directed at him. "I think you best go now." No more words were exchanged, and the door closed. Arthur felt queasy. "Alfred, honey, come into the kitchen." Moon-faced and unquestioning, Alfred obeyed.

When Arthur was alone in the den, the awful spell on him broke and he threw aside _Tom Sawyer_, vaulting up out of his seat. All at once the boiling heat in the house, Mrs. Jones' pale face, Alfred's quavering anticipation, it was all terrible and he had to be rid of it. In his chest, his heart surged and he had to put effort into not panting like a trapped beast. He had to go—he couldn't stay here. Couldn't stay and listen to Mrs. Jones rip Alfred's world apart, stay and hear his bewildered hurt, stay for the tears and a grief so familial and private his very existence in their lives felt like an intrusion. He took his leave out the back door and, as he passed into the front yard, availed himself of Alfred's bike, abandoned on the front lawn from two days prior.

He had only one destination in mind when he began peddling on the undersized bike: away. Away from the Joneses and their curse of K.I.A., away from the contamination of death, before it spread to him and his family. Overpowering any sense of sympathy was abject horror, revulsion and the panicked need to put distance between himself and this specter of his own fears, as if from a victim of the Plague.

Feet hammering wildly, he pushed himself through quiet streets, past well-intentioned neighbors whose visits would come less and less often once the news became known. They could distance themselves, and take comfort in the company of those who were not thus marked. But Arthur, Arthur was trapped here, unable to cast away the Joneses in their sorrow, and thus put his fears further from his own reality.

His legs began to give out as he reached one of the fields, so he pressed on towards it, and dropped the bike at the edge of the road. His hasty, increasingly fatigued flight continued across the grass until he'd come over a small rise, and, partially sheltered from passers-by on the road, fell onto his knees, chest heaving, throat shredded by his frantic ride.

When was the last time he had heard from home? Before his move to America! Who was to say this very same tragedy hadn't befallen the Kirklands already?

If he could've stayed away all night, he would have. But he was eleven, and he knew Mrs. Jones was not so deep in grief as to not notice if her foreign charge didn't return. So he found it in himself to pick up the bike and start the mournful trudge back to the Joneses'.

Standing on their front doorstep, opening the door felt like the most difficult thing he had ever had to do. His hand seemed to fight him, resisting his brain's instruction to reach out and grasp the handle. But he did, and quickly stepped in, and the house was deadly quiet. For a moment, Arthur wasn't even sure they were home, and he half-worried Mrs. Jones had gone out looking for him. He had expected to come home to the sound of sobbing.

Tip-toeing like a character from a horror novel, he moved as quietly as he could to the kitchen archway, and peered in. Mrs. Jones was at the table, hands wrapped around a mug, staring emptily into it. As he looked, she pushed it away, and lowered her head down to rest it against her forearm. The strength and will in her frame had bled out, leaving this defeated husk, like the images Arthur had seen of soldiers returned from the Great War. Mrs. Jones' long slog through the civilian trenches had rewarded her with widowhood, and Arthur had never felt sorrier for a grown lady in his life.

He moved on, knowing he could say nothing to her. The pit of his stomach supplied him with more and more dread as he crept up the stairs to Alfred's room. He could not have described why the idea of encountering Alfred now gave him so much anxiety, but he would've rather uncovered a python in his bed at the moment.

In their shared quarters, Alfred was seated cross-legged on his bed, with the same empty stare as his mother. He had some toy soldiers in front of him, but his hands rested limply in his lap. Unlike Mrs. Jones, he took note of Arthur at once.

"They could be wrong, right?" His words were gentle, but Arthur wanted to cover his ears and tell Alfred to be quieter. "Sometimes they make mistakes. Identify the wrong body…"

Arthur wished he hadn't come back. What on God's green Earth could he say? He refused to encourage Alfred with a pipe dream that his father was still alive, but he didn't want to sit him down and say it was impossible either.

"Not very often," he replied at last.

"I know," Alfred murmured, looking down at his soldiers. He touched one lightly. "He uh…he gave me these, you know? Some of them were his, when he was a kid too." Arthur pushed himself over the threshold of the room, and stood by Alfred's bed to look. "Your dad is fighting too, right?" Alfred looked up at him with those cornflower blue eyes.

"Yes," Arthur whispered, nodding.

"I hope your daddy comes home safe," Alfred said, his eyes glistening. "I really do, Arthur. I hope everyone in your family comes home safe. You too." A lump pressed against Arthur's throat, and he nodded again, trying to convey…something.

"I hope so too," he choked out. Alfred returned to staring at the soldiers, so Arthur sat down on the cot, and used his journal to compose a letter home that he knew he couldn't send. Hours later, Mrs. Jones called them down for dinner. Ham sandwiches.

When Arthur woke up in the morning, Alfred had gone to sleep in his mother's room, and Arthur pitied the whole bloody world.

Watching the Jones grieve was a strange, and morbidly fascinating process. When the shock of the news wore off, the tears came. But it took a long time for the pair of them—Alfred especially, being so young—to fully register in their minds that the far-off Mr. Jones was now forever out of their reach. Mrs. Jones made an effort not to cry in front of them, but Arthur heard her sometimes late at night, or caught her staring into space, her mouth turned down in the softest expression of the deepest sorrow. She was oddly beautiful in those moments, like a Renaissance painting, and Arthur witnessed her grief, if he said nothing. He felt sure other people would know what to say or do, but he did not, so he could only offer his memory space to the image of her pain, making a silent record that she had been here, and she had been hurt.

Alfred would break down crying at the strangest times. He was only slightly embarrassed, and most often tried to pretend it wasn't happening. Alfred was easier to comfort, because he was younger. Arthur could pat his back, or try to distract him with games, or even hug him sometimes. He felt a distant and vague sense of anger and injustice towards the Japanese soldiers who had killed Mr. Jones and made Alfred feel this way, and he wondered if this was at all how his brothers felt when he, Arthur, was hurt by someone.

"Mama says we should remember the good things," Alfred explained, wiping his teary eyes as they took a break from their ball game in the backyard so he could collect himself. "Because daddy loved us, you know? And—and we're lucky. Because he loved us, and even though he's gone we can remember that." His voice wobbled, but stayed serious.

Arthur nodded, as he did when Alfred talked about his father's death. "He was a good man," he agreed.

The rest of the summer was a white haze for the Joneses, a fog of forgetfulness and disorientation sprung from their loss. He had never known Mrs. Jones to forget an appointment or a birthday card, but she lapsed left and right in the months after the news. Her friends and neighbors forgave it, but Arthur could see them distancing themselves from her as they had done with countless war widows before. They didn't want to be tainted by her bad luck. Friend after friend dropped out of their lives until Mrs. Jones had it out with her decades-old friend Sadie, shouting that she was a selfish coward while the boys watched in awed horror from the top of the stairs. Sadie gave a flustered, feeble defense and took flight for the front door, pursued by Mrs. Jones, who slammed it after her exit and told her not to bother coming by anymore, and she could tell the same to Connie and Harriet.

"Mom," Alfred said when it was over, gaping at her.

"I'm sorry you had to hear that," she told him crisply. "But Alfred, sugar, bad friends are worse than no friends."

"That was the most amazing thing I ever saw," he said. "Dad would be on your side." A smile struggled on Mrs. Jones' lips as she fought not to encourage Alfred's approval of the scene.

"Your father was always on my side," she said, "because he knew what was good for him."

When they went back to school in the fall, they were no longer at the same school, and Arthur had to take the bus to get to his junior high. But Alfred would wait at the bus stop for Arthur to get off, so they could finish the walk home together. When Arthur saw him sitting out in the sweltering early fall heat, for no other reason, he felt deeply touched, and tried to be more patient with Alfred's chatter.

One day, when they had circled the topic of family again, as children are apt to do, Alfred mentioned he had always wanted a brother—something that was unlikely to happen now.

"I mean, I would've liked a big brother, to teach me stuff," Alfred said. "Especially when daddy was away. But I would've been happy with a little brother too. Then I could teach him stuff!"

"Big brothers are a pain," Arthur told him again. "They break your stuff and squish your food and get you in trouble."

"I bet your brothers would say little brothers are a pain," Alfred said cheekily, grinning. He was doing better now, but sometimes Arthur still saw him start crying when something triggered the memory of his father's absence. He was ten now, and Arthur thought it had been a thousand years since he was ten, and he couldn't fathom his father being gone forever from his life then. Sometimes, he felt so terribly old, he wanted to lay down and never move again.

"My brothers aren't here so their stupid opinions don't count," Arthur said. "I'd rather have a little brother."

"Me!" Alfred exclaimed, bouncing up and down and somehow managing to keep walking at the same time. "I'm like your American brother!" That made Arthur smile despite himself. "You're going to be my honorary big brother, okay Artie? Which means you have to teach me stuff."

"Like what?" Arthur asked.

"I don't know, we'll figure that out later. How to change a tire or something."

"I don't know how to change a tire," Arthur said.

"You're not doing so good at this big brother thing, Artie," Alfred said seriously. Arthur punched him in the shoulder. "Ow! That's better! Jerry says his brother punches him all the time."

"Welcome to having a big brother," Arthur said.

"So we are then?" Alfred asked, gazing up at Arthur, although their height difference shrank monthly. "Brothers?" Arthur looked at him a moment and nodded.

"Yes. You'll be my American brother," he agreed, reaching over to give Alfred a hard noogie, like Iain did to him on a daily basis back home.

"Ow! Great! I'll have to—" He cut off, and rethought. "I'll have to tell Jerry I've got a big brother now too."

"The first thing I'm teaching you is how to punch properly," Arthur told him. "So you can thump those twats at school."

"Who's that?" Alfred shifted his backpack uneasily.

"You know who. Those boys who give you trouble. I've seen them."

"It's nothing," Alfred said, shuffling his feet. "Just some teasing."

"Are they still bothering you?" Arthur asked.

"They just, uh…think I'm not too smart," Alfred said. "'cause of the reading and all…but it's okay, I don't mind being a little dumb…" Reading had gotten no easier for Alfred, and no one could explain why at ten, he still struggled through simple passages.

"I rest my case," Arthur said. "You're learning how to punch. Learning how to fight was one of the only useful things I ever learned from my brother Iain. And my sister, actually."

"Your sister taught you to fight?" Alfred asked, his eyes widening.

"She did," Arthur said. "Shit. Mairead can throw a punch to outdo Iain. And don't ever let her get near your ears, you'll never hear again." He made a gesture like boxing ears. It made him smile a little. "Sometimes when I got in fights at school, and she was due to pick me up, she'd drag them off and if they didn't piss themselves running for their mummies, I'm a leprechaun."

"That's amazing!" Alfred exclaimed. "Boy, maybe I'd like a big sister too!"

"Yeah, she was also the one to tell mum I'd been fighting," Arthur said. "Well. Sometimes. Not all the time. Sometimes it was just between us, and she'd tell mum I slipped and that's how I got hurt." He didn't tell Alfred that sometimes, when he had been quite little, she would carry him home on her back. Or about how once in a blue moon, when she had a free Saturday with no plans, she would go down to a brook with him and help him catch tadpoles. Or that when he couldn't sleep and mummy was too tired, he would go sit with Mairead, because she would tell the best bedtime stories (even better than mummy's, if he was being honest. Mairead loved telling stories, and Arthur loved hearing them).

"That was nice," Alfred said.

"That's what siblings do," Arthur decided. "They drive you crazy all the time but…when it counts, I guess, they're on your side."

"So you're on my side?" Alfred asked.

"You bet your arse," Arthur said, mimicking something he'd heard Iain say. It made Alfred laugh, and it felt almost like there was healing in the air.

Arthur went home in 1944, when the tide of the war seemed in Allied favor, and London children were being summoned home. Mrs. Jones drove him to the airport, with Alfred in the backseat alternating between long, anxious silences and feverish talking. Arthur said little.

They accompanied him through to his terminal and hugged him goodbye.

"Thank you," he said to Mrs. Jones. "For everything." He felt he had no words to accurately convey how much she had done for him, but he hoped the emotion got through.

Alfred hugged him for a long time, and Arthur didn't mind.

"We're still brothers," Alfred said. He was almost as tall as Arthur now, tall for his age, and growing into an exceptionally good American football player. Arthur was pleased to say he punched better now too.

"Of course," Arthur said. "That can't just go away." Alfred smiled, and started crying again. "Oh, don't be such a baby," Arthur told him. "You're going to be too busy to think about me soon anyway. Besides, you'll finally get your room back."

Alfred shrugged, wiping his jaw dry. "It's hard to remember what it was like having my own room," he said. "It'll feel too big now, I 'spect." If he was abashed by his tears, he didn't show it.

"Be good for your mum, okay?" Arthur grabbed Alfred's ear, like Mairead did to him when he was _particularly _supposed to be paying attention. "She's too nice to deal with a troublesome kid." Alfred winced, but grinned.

"I'm _always_ good, Artie!"

"Yeah, and I'm the queen," Arthur said sarcastically. They clapped hands and shook like men, and Alfred, dry-eyed again, gave Arthur a playful salute as he grabbed his old suitcase—and a new bag to carry the possessions he had acquired since arrival—and followed the small stream of people onto the plane.

"God save the king!" Alfred called laughingly after Arthur.

On the long plane ride over, he thought of Francis for the first time in a long while, and wondered if he had gone home as well. Paris was still occupied, but the Allies were deep in planning on how to free France. It was the first time he realized—and acknowledged—he was probably never going to see Francis again. It added onto the pain of leaving the Joneses, who _were_ like family by then, and he spent most of the ride nursing his poor, aching heart.

He landed in Heathrow, and when he had collected his luggage and made his way to the main lobby, he was shocked to see his entire family—except Iain, who had was serving abroad with the British Army—had come to collect him. He stopped in his tracks, taking the sight of them—so familiar, but different from his memory—in.

Daffyd had come home already, and was definitely taller, but still not as tall as Iain. Mairead stood by, her carrot-top hair wrestled into the regulation bun for British nurses—as she was home on a brief leave. He wondered if she had negotiated it to be here when he got home, or if it was happenstance. Dad was there too—with a crutch. When Arthur looked down, dad was missing his left leg below the knee. Explained why he was home. And mum—mum was there too, and she looked exactly as Arthur remembered, only so much more tired. Her eyes welled up as soon as she saw him, and for a moment Arthur was frozen. Then he dropped his suitcase and stepped quickly forward, running the last few steps to throw himself into her arms.

"Mummy," he gasped, knowing he was making a spectacle of himself, but unable to place that above seeing his family again after nearly four years.

"You're so tall," Mrs. Kirkland wept, breaking down into sobs. "Oh, none of your things are going to fit!" She held him in an iron grip, but for once he didn't protest or try to wiggle out of her grasp.

"He can wear my old stuff, mum," Daffyd said.

"I think he looks just as shrimpy as ever," Mairead said. "I bet I could still pick you up." Arthur glared ineffectually at her over mum's shoulder, but he still didn't trust his voice, so he didn't bother quipping back. When they had finally separated Mrs. Kirkland from her youngest son—and he allowed it—he picked up his valise again, and dad clapped a hand on his back.

"It's good to see you again, son." Like Arthur, Mr. Kirkland was not a virulently emotional man, but the short phrase meant everything to the child who heard it.

"It's good to be home," Arthur said, walking out into a place that felt as familiar and foreign as a dream.

In 1945, when Arthur was fourteen, the Kirklands toasted the end of the war and the Allied victory. Iain came home on his own two legs, missing only a couple fingers on his right hand from a weapons malfunction. They were all collected under the roof again, with Mairead waiting for the return of the husband who had married her on leave, and was due home soon from the French front. Neighbors joined them and the room was filled with the sound of war stories, with younger neighborhood children begging Arthur to tell them about what it was like in America. He regaled them with tales of American football, and how big the yards were, and the strange food he had eaten.

The adults were all in a flurry, bringing in food and drinks that the Kirklands couldn't have finished in a month. Arthur helped find room for the dishes and welcome people to the house, as he counted himself among the adults, and thought he ought to behave like one.

Iain kissed Mary McCullough from next door when the clock struck the appointed hour that the truce became binding, and with shouts heard around the world, they raised their glasses to the end of World War Two.

It wasn't until after one in the morning that the house was finally empty of guests, and everyone had gone up to bed, except Iain who was out in the garden with Mary, having snuck out an hour earlier. At long last, all was quiet on the Western front, and Arthur thought there was a sense of peace in his heart as he got out of the armchair he'd fallen asleep in earlier, stretching his aching limbs. Dad was snoring upstairs, and occasionally he heard a car drive by—folks were out late tonight. Arthur went into the kitchen and found a bottle of wine that still had something in it, and poured himself a glass at the table. Mum and dad hadn't given him anything to drink, but they hadn't stopped anyone from sharing with him either.

"To the end of the war," he said to Francis, picturing the twelve-year-old sitting across from him, because he couldn't fathom what Francis looked like now, at sixteen. He wasn't sure he would even know Francis anymore, but he would always remember the boy who had been his friend. "And to your safe return home, and your mum and dad too." He raised the glass and had a long swallow. "And fuck, may we learn from our parents' and grandparents' mistakes." He took another drink. "And may our adulthood turn out a bit less adventurous than our childhood." He finished the glass. "Goodnight, Francis." He rose from the table, and went upstairs to have a rest.

**AN:**

I stopped working on this rather abruptly in February, not long after saying I'd finish it, and that's because my dad passed away quite unexpectedly early in the month. So you understand this chapter in particular was difficult to write, as I was partway through it when I felt Alfred's pain on a new level. I'm sorry he'll never get to finish the story, but I'll always remember how supportive he was of me, and I'll always be grateful.

Story notes: Alfred is dyslexic. This is my headcanon for him in canonverse too, and I can't resist slipping it in whenever I have the chance.

I know I didn't focus very long on the Joneses and what happened to them, but it would be easy for them to take over the story in light of what happened, and it is still about Arthur (additionally, I didn't want Alfred to become a voice piece for my own feelings).

My timelines may not be entirely accurate. I tried to do some research, but I've never extensively studied the London refugees of WWII, so if I have mistakes, I apologize.

I hope you enjoyed this piece, and I hope you'll tune in for the second part! Although I will say, it will contain much heavier themes than this one dealt with, so if you choose not to read it, I understand. Thanks for reading and commenting, you've made it a pleasure as always, FrUK fandom!


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